


One Last Ride (Seriously, Because Toph is No Longer Allowed to Drive Druk)

by KingRiles



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (...70 Years Late), Actually Has a Plot, Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Cartels, Comedy, Drama, Druk is a GOOD BOY, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Set Post-S4 TLOK, Some angst, Toph Beifong and Zuko are Siblings, Toph Beifong is a Terrible Driver of Dragons, Toph Gets A Field Trip (A Better One), badass old people, just enough, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25196254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingRiles/pseuds/KingRiles
Summary: When an elderly Toph Beifong seeks out an also-elderly Lord Zuko and demands a rematch of the worst life-changing field trip ever from their youth, Zuko can’t say no....Seriously, he can’t, because Toph just wrecked the Imperial Courtyard and blew his door off its hinges, and Izumi isn’t letting it all be ruined for nothing.Did he mention there's apparently a cartel after them?Oh Agni.
Relationships: Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 42
Kudos: 218





	1. The Intruder

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own the Avatar characters in this story!

“Your tea is getting cold."

Zuko couldn’t help the thrill of surprise from running up his neck at Izumi’s succinct reminder, and made it a point to take a half-hearted sip from his cup under his daughter’s watchful golden gaze. He was focused back on the reports spread over the table in seconds, drawing one from the centre of the fray to furrow a brow at.

“Do we still have defense posts in Rei Lin and Omashu?”

“Not for much longer,” Izumi revealed. “Kuvira’s forces there have weakened considerably in the past month since her surrender. I’ve sent word to our generals stationed there that should the next week pass without incident, they’ll return to the Fire Nation.”

Zuko risked a sigh of content.

It had, in as few words as possible, been a busy few moons for the Fire Nation.

While Kuvira had surrendered to the authority of the United Republic of Nations, official reports had written that there were now rogue generals continuing the Empire’s tyrannical legacy across remote regions in the Earth Kingdom. While Izumi, and he was quite proud of her for doing so, had refused Raiko in assuming the offense against the Earth Empire, she had still offered the help of the Fire Nation’s military to defend the Earth Kingdom’s most sensitive borders.

But now with Kuvira in custody and the rest of her brigade crumbling without her will, the Earth Kingdom was readily reattaining its power. He had even heard word of Wu resolving to abolish the Earth monarchy in favor of independent democratic states - following in the steps of Republic City once the Council was nixed.

Yet there was never enough room to relax, not while one slept under the roof of the Royal Palace. Zuko knew this well, but he still poured over the paperwork with a stitch in his brow and a displeased curl on his lip. Last night Commander Teruko had wired the Palace to inform them of a blockade of resources to a small Earth Kingdom down by a rogue group of Empire scouts, stubbornly clinging onto what measly illusion of power they had left. They were requesting permission to move on the soldiers to flush them out so that the town the wily stragglers were isolating could feed themselves next month.

Ninety-one, and Zuko refused to step away from his place as an ambassador of peace in the Fire Nation. Izumi knew better than to try to convince him into complete retirement. After all, his stance truly was an _unofficial_ one. He was still stubborn as a saber moose-lion when he needed, or simply _wanted_ to be.

The next time he took a sip of tea, it was cold.

Izumi had excused herself only a few moments ago, planning to wire Iroh to infer about the progress of the United Forces in dismantling the various militant Empire stations spotting the Earth Kingdom. Before she’d left, she’d stopped by Zuko’s seat and pressed a gentle kiss to his temple. “Don’t wear yourself out,” she told him as she stepped out, but it felt more like a chide.

He did wrap up his time at the table. Eventually. The sun felt higher, he wryly commented to himself as he pulled himself up from his seat. It rose and fell far too quickly now; it did not help to know that inevitably, he would rise his last.

 _How cynical,_ he thought as he organized his papers into their parcel, greeting the hall staff reverently as they swept him by to pick up the remains of his relatively untouched breakfast. He moved from the dining hall into the personal living wing - where only he and his family roamed.

En route to his own bedchambers, intent on compiling responses to their waiting patrols and then a policy brief to help Wu better understand how to implement his new form of government - the floor underfoot trembled.

And then stopped.

Zuko blinked, staring at the floor below him, wondering idly if someone had slipped a sprig of white jade into his morning tea. What on earth had _that_ been? _Yes_ , the Fire Nation’s capital was nestled in the heart of a volcano’s caldera, but never before had he felt a tremor of such vigor. Nonetheless he backtracked from the hall and stepped out into an open room, lips pursed with questioning as two Palace guards hastily closed the distance between them and him.

“Lord Zuko,” Lieutenant Yaza bowed, fist curled tensely in the cup of his palm. “There’s a disturbance in the courtyard-- Izumi has requested you go to your chambers.”

“What kind of disturbance?” Zuko prompted, brow moving a fraction higher when Yaza traded a nearly imperceptible look with his counterpart.

“An intruder, sir,” Private So divulged.

Zuko frowned. “But Druk isn’t shaking the Palace apart?” ...Which was at this point expected by all its residents, whenever, on as rare an occasion as it was, someone unsavory lurked in the shadows of the royal walls. Again, the ground below them shuddered, as if the dormant volcano far below them had a rattling cough. _An earthbender?_

Apparently, his ability to protect himself as the former Fire Lord and as a master firebender meant nothing to his guards as they flanked him on both sides, escorting him to the solitary safety of his bedchambers.

“Is Izumi all right?”

“Yes, Lord Zuko,” Yaza supplied. “She rang us as soon as we noticed the disturbance outside.”

While he felt indignant being ushered to safety like some helpless kitten-owlet, he allowed it to happen to offer his daughter some peace of mind. Agni knew she needed it now. The unexpected visitor that was apparently tossing clods of earth outside was just the icing on the fruit tart. When they apprehended them, Zuko might personally visit their holding cell just to chastise them for their antics.

The ground rumbled a handful of times before Zuko was practically shoved into his bedchambers, swaying on his heel to ask-- but his door had already been sealed shut. He made a bitter but tolerant sound before moving to his office suite to drop the papers across his mat. And as utterly _delightful_ as sitting here at his desk, a pen in his hand sounded, the crick in his shoulders were beginning to speak at a volume he couldn’t ignore. He resigned his paper-duty in favor of moving back to his bed, retrieving the book he’d taken to in the past few suns from his study on the way.

Was it willful ignorance to ignore the ongoings outside, he thought to himself as he slowly settled himself on his comforter? ...No. It wasn’t. He just didn’t feel like bothering with what was most likely an amateur sleuth trying to steal his way into the most _protected_ place in the Fire Nation and make his future in rubies and other priceless treasures.

If Izumi had deemed the personal wing safe, then he saw no reason to question her order.

 _An intruder. Who would have the gall?_ Zuko thought with a lopsided, disbelieving smile.

And then his door blew off its hinges.

“ ** _You_**.”

_Oh. She would._

Toph Beifong hovered proudly in the doorway, fists on her hips as she pointedly ignored the rather alarming sounds of Palace guards trying to blaze their way through rocks that had surged up through the Palace floor, effectively blocking them from seizing her.

Zuko could only balk as his old friend marched into his room as if she were the Fire Lord herself. “You, me, life-changing trip, right here, right now.”

“Wh-- _What?”_

Toph let out an exasperated sigh as if Zuko’s confusion was out-of-place. “Okay. You, mister _Fire Lord Zuko_ , owe me a trip. A life-changing trip. Because, frankly, the one we had on Ember Island was terrible and awful and hardly deserves to be called a _trip_ at all. It was a walk on the beach and you called my childhood sucky, or something.”

“I don’t-”

“No talking yet.” A bony hand snapped up, stopping Zuko before he could defend himself. Or, his past self, actually. “Actually, no talking at all. I don’t wanna hear any answer that doesn’t shape up to sound like a yes.”

“But-”

“What’s that?”

Calloused fingers gripped the bridge of his nose. Toph meant to steal him away out of the blue for a field trip? “Toph-"

“ _Ahbupbup-_ That’s not sounding like a yes, Lord Sparky.”

Lips pinched together, exasperated. What would his daughter think if he stole away in the middle of the day? “How much of the Palace did you ruin?”

Toph casually hitched back her shoulders, as if she’d simply just risen from an afternoon nap. “Not much. It’s nothing your welders can’t fix in a fortnight.

“A fortnight,” he echoed, incredulous, holding a hand up to his head like it needed the support to keep from hanging at his chest. “Why didn’t you just tell the guards who you were?”

“You think they’d believe me?” Toph remarked drily, then seemed to think for a moment, and snorted. “Okay, I could’ve. Would’ve spared me a lot of hassling to get down here. And a few singed hairs.”

Zuko, at this point, had gotten up from his bed at a speed that surprised even him, moving over to Toph-- arms spreading despite himself to wrap around her. Even if she had reached him in a... rather unorthodox way, he was still glad to see her. It truly had been far too long since he had seen her last. When she had resigned as the Chief of Police in Republic City, she had almost immediately dropped off any major radar thereafter. Of course he had heard of her resurfacing with her daughters against Kuvira-- but he had been held here in the Fire Nation for several months now.

Time had been as kind to her as it had been to him, it seemed - a hunch to her back, greyed hair, deep lines mapping her face that, despite everything time had thrown at her, still smirked the same smirk he remembered from the closure of the Hundred Year War.

The thoughts lapsed by in the fraction of a heartbeat as Toph scoffed and pushed her way out of his hold. “If you wanna hug something, go hug one of your big fancy pillars out in the hall!” She groused, jabbing a bony finger into his chest. “So what’s it gonna be?”

Zuko gingerly stepped back. “A… field trip?” he repeated, like hearing it a fourth time would finally make him understand her random appearance back into his life. And offer some scrap of sense as to what she was demanding from him.

“What, have you gone deaf in your other ear, too?” Toph retorted. “Yeah. It’s a simple yes-or-no question, but for your sake, I personally think you wanna pick yes.”

“I can’t up and leave this place.”

“Why not? You used to do it all the time.”

“I’ll need to speak with Izumi.”

Toph guffawed, and Zuko politely decided not to be affronted by the action. “Do you need her permission or something? You’re as much a Fire Lord as she is!”

Zuko shook his head dismissively. “You know Izumi, Toph. Even as a child she wanted to know everything going on around her.”

Toph wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I remember. Got along great with Lin, that girl-- but no changing the subject, firebender-! Is that a-”

Before she could finish, Izumi appeared under his very much busted door, her face grim and her gait grimmer. Toph crossed her arms beside him, facing Izumi’s direction with a firm stance. “I’m not budging until this guy says yes or keels over before he gets the chance to say no.”

“Could my father and I have a moment to speak, please, Master Beifong?” Izumi’s austere voice reached them before she did, and to Zuko’s astonishment, Toph only crossed her arms and turned into his study. “A _moment,_ she calls it,” he heard the earthbender grumble as the door slammed pointedly closed, “who’s kingdom do they think this _is_?”

When Toph was out of earshot Izumi turned back to Zuko, who was busily trying to examine the texture of his walls as if they were suddenly the most fascinating thing this side of the country. Had the thread work of his tapestries always been so detailed? They ought to commission more.

“I hope you have good reason for Toph Beifong to be here.”

“I didn’t know,” Zuko replied honestly, unable to keep the dumbfoundment from creeping in his voice as he faced Izumi. His hands were raised up in surrender. “She gave no forewarning.”

Izumi mirrored Zuko’s earlier gesture, pinching just above the rim of her glasses with a small, taut smile. “Then she hasn’t changed. What is she here for? The guards report she came in the front, demanding to see you but refused to wait for a guard to fetch you.”

“She wants to take me away from here, for a time.”

“Take you away?” His daughter regarded him with sharp golden eyes. “Whatever for?”

While it was hardly appropriate, Zuko couldn’t help the mirthful sigh from falling out of his nose. “..A field trip, Izumi. You remember the stories of when I traveled with Avatar Aang’s friends when we were only children? Toph found her personal trip with me particularly lacking.”

Izumi appeared pensive. Considerate, even. It surprised him. Silence between them stretched a moment before she curled her hands firmly around her hips and regarded her father. Once more, Zuko could not help but be impressed by his daughter’s unyielding resolve. It reminded him so much of her mother. “Then go with her.”

“Pardon?”

“You need some breathing space.” Zuko was posed to argue back, but Izumi stopped him with a firm weave of her slim hand. “When Zaheer escaped your priority was not only to stop them, but to protect me. You did the very same when Kuvira’s forces threatened the world’s peace. You’ve hardly left the palace since Wu’s coronation. Time away might do you more good than you believe. You let your tea cool this morning. You’d have my head before you let me brood long enough to let my own chill."

“That's quite the stretch," Zuko muttered, feeling petulant under his daughter's knowing stare. "And there is still work to be done! Stations to reach out to, orders to wire-”

“None of which fall solely onto your plate. We have lieutenants and our diplomats at the ready. You’re already doing more than your worth of work here,” Izumi pressed. “You need an out, father.”

Zuko could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Are you throwing me out of my _own_ palace?”

“It is hardly yours _alone_ , father,” Izumi clipped cheekily back, the taut smile on her lips warming as she pressed a hand affectionately to her father’s cheek. “Go with Toph. The Fire Nation is in no danger.” There was a pause. She narrowed her eyes pointedly up into Zuko’s baffled ones, giving his cheek an adamant _pat-pat_. “And I won’t have the royal courtyard and that hallway ruined only for _you_ to turn down its destroyer.”

Ah. _There_ was the Izumi he knew.

As much as he longed to argue, Izumi’s words held more truth than he was willing to face himself. A part of him had always longed to be here, home, with Izumi ever since Zaheer threatened to overthrow the balance of the world by annihilating the world leaders, beginning with Queen Hou-Ting. The thought of her being taken and dispatched by them had been too much for him to even consider leaving her be. The only time he had made a brief exceptions from leaving the palace then had been to attend the anointment of Tenzin’s daughter into an airbending master, and to Wu’s coronation. That fiasco of a coronation had introduced more issues than he could’ve ever thought possible in a single sun. It had been years since Zaheer and months since Kuvira’s takeover, and he still felt that wince of worry pierce his heart to leave Izumi’s side.

Yes, she was a firm and capable Fire Lord, of that he had no doubt. She was her mother’s daughter, after all - she could take care of herself. She always had.

“Do we have your daughter’s _blessing_ yet?” came Toph’s impatient voice echoing from behind the study door before it was drawn open. From the corner of his eye he could see her hovering… a little too menacingly. “I promise I won't throw _too_ many rocks at his head.”

Zuko surrendered to his fate with nothing more than a subtle sigh. ““I don’t suppose I have a choice.”

Toph, with a satisfied smirk splitting her face from ear-to-ear (it was almost frightening, really,) swung open the study and strode back into Zuko’s bedroom. “About time. I was beginning to gear up to demand a refund for that ticket I had to buy to get all the way to these overheated chunks of island.” She dropped down carelessly onto his bed, pulling her hands up to brace her head with a content huff. “I forget how lavish you live it up here, Sparky. The thread count on this thing is astounding. Hardly beats the swamp, though.”

"We'll begin reparations on the courtyard at dawn and the hallway tonight," Izumi sighed into her palm, her glasses pushing up against the side of her hand. "I suggest you two make haste. It will be easier for the Palace building crew to begin knowing the perpetrator is long gone and won't do it again."

"Not a problem, your Fiery Lordliness, we'll be out of your topknot by sundown," Toph crowed from somewhere behind Zuko. He had to pinch his lips together so tightly they paled in order not to sigh-- or was that a snicker? Oh spirits.

He bid an exasperated Izumi a good-bye with a gentle hug, guiding her to his…to the _hole where a door had once been_ , in a more fortunate world. He heard her begin to placate the guards who had just begun to filter into the wing, all angry barks of sound.

 _Then_ Zuko turned to Toph, hands gripping his waist in a manner much like Izumi had just done unto him a minute ago. “The _swamp?_ ” Was Toph Beifong, _master earthbender_ renowned throughout the world for creating _metal-bending_ , living in a _swamp_?

“Been living there a few years, but not like you ever bothered to find that out, it sounds like,” sniffed Toph, lips pursing. “Eh, to be fair, not like I wanted anyone to find out, anyhow. It took an Avatar to dredge me outta the mud and back into the limelight, for spirits’ sake.”

Zuko glanced up, absently moving to begin packing. “You’ve met Avatar Korra?”

...Then promptly felt silly for asking such a thing. While Toph had not been part of the team to oversee Korra’s early life with the White Lotus, or to apprehend the Red Lotus when they had stolen her when she was only a few years old - Toph never had been keen to be the only person left out of an experience. Which led to what was happening here and now.

Not to mention that she had helped to stop Kuvira outside of Zaofu, according to a report from two months ago.

“Of course I have,” Toph snorted. “Sure, I met her by finding her face-down in the mud in the Foggy Swamp, but that’s honestly a way better first impression than Aang had on me.”

A dry chuckle rumbled under Zuko’s breath. He had finished filling his travel parcel with impromptu materials. He sincerely had no idea what Toph had in store - but he would be a fool before he questioned her cunning and innovation. He anticipated that they would be leaving the Fire Nation and while the nostalgia of living it rugged out on the land on the back of a flying bison made his heart ache with remembrance, he was also ninety-one. There were a few things he had to take into consideration now that he didn’t need to when he was a hotheaded teenager- such as, for example, back pain. Joint pain. And sometimes his hip did this infuriating thing where it twinged in every other stride.

Toph rose her chin from her spot on the bed. His bed, mind you. “I heard everything, by the way.”

“I did figure that.”

“Glad to know someone else in the group took on a hermit lifestyle.”

“I’m not a hermit, Toph.”

“Hmm…” Toph rose a hand, fingers extended, pulling one down with every point. “Stays at home, doesn’t go out into the outside world, your own daughter is getting tired of you dragging your feet around-”

“Point taken,” grumbled Zuko. “Why didn’t you wire me, Toph? You knew the Palace is fitted with newer technology.”

“And give you a head’s up to start fleeing the country? You seem to have forgotten who you’re talking to. _Forethought?_ In the same sentence as Toph Beifong? How _dare_ you.”

“I wouldn’t have fled,” he said in a surprisingly soft tone of voice. Then he sent Toph a nettled look, a bit smug knowing that she couldn’t see it. “But some forewarning would’ve been appreciated.”

“Save the simpers for another old woman who can actually see it.”

“What even spurred this? Did something happen?”

“Can’t I just be filled with bitterness over the fact that you robbed me of my life-changing field trip? And be smug over the fact that your daughter’s in _my_ corner?”

“Hmm," he ceded with a grumble that was more bemusement than frustration.

Zuko closed his parcel with a resounding thatch of the golden buckle. _Robbed her?_ It wasn’t _his_ fault that they had run out of time before Sozin’s Comet and Aang had decided it was a _brilliant_ time to run off on the back of an ancient Lion Turtle. Not that they knew that, though. So.

Toph smiled at the sound. “You done packing your make-up, pretty boy? We’d better get moving and catch the next boat outta here. I came here by _boat_ , Zuko. Do you know how awful that is? For _me_? To subject myself to being that blind again?”

“All of our boats are... metal, Toph.” Or, at least he knew their commercial vessels that moved between the Fire Nation islands and the mainland were.

Toph snapped her stare to him like she could actually see him. She looked decently startled. “Then whose crummy wooden boat was I on? You know what- doesn’t matter. You’ve got a navy at your command. So long as the next boat’s got metal in it, I’ll save you from the badgering.”

Before Zuko could stop it, an innocuous smile weaseled its way across his face. “Why ever would we need a boat to leave the country?”

Toph’s grimace deepened, hoisting herself up with a curious frown. “Airship?”

Zuko's smile festered into a devilish smirk.

* * *

“What in Guanyin’s name,” Toph swore as Zuko led her to Druk’s hall. “That can’t possibly be _your_ dragon. He’s _massive_. That isn’t your dragon.”

“He is.”

“Yeah, and I’m a turtleduck. What is this, a glorified stable for dragons?”

Druk’s dwelling truly was nothing to snicker at. It was a grand chamber lined with vermillion-and-black marble, mapped with gold veins, constructed to resemble the cave chambers he had first found Druk in. Or, rather, Druk had found _him_ in. Zuko had been adamant to the builders responsible for its construction that Druk have room to roam, and an exit available to him at all times. He was a dragon, after all, not a rabbit-dog in need of kenneling and constant supervision.

..Which meant that sometimes Druk disappeared in the middle of the night and in the morning there were mysterious piles of cow-pig bones on his many perches. Zuko had always been sure to recompense the poor butchers who had woken in the morning and reported four of their livestock missing.

“Druk is free to wander as he pleases,” Zuko told her, moving promptly over to the dragon’s side to run a hand appreciatively over warm red scaling. “He is a firebender, more than the rest of us.”

A deep, rattling chuff billowed in the red dragon’s throat as a colossal maned head turned to regard his master. Hot air flew out of flared nostrils, ruffling Zuko’s hair before a muzzle pressed forward with intent. He heard Toph stifle with surprise next to him, if only from the sheer size of the thing before her, reaching out a hand to press it square onto the bridge of the dragon’s snout to keep the pesky, snuffling nose away from her. “Has he always so touchy?”

“He must remember you,” Zuko noted. “Druk prefers to strike fear into hearts and then win them later. He isn’t so affectionate to strangers.” “Last I saw him he was half this size,” Toph argued, freeing her hand to gesture broadly in the direction of the dragon - and in that moment of distraction, Druk snaked in his snout to bump it against Toph’s shoulder.

“Nuh-uh,” Toph tutted, seizing Druk’s long whiskers in both hands, and with impressive precision stared straight down into the dragon’s bright eyes. “Go cuddle Lord Sparky over there.”

“Don’t be rude to your ride, he might think to toss you off,” Zuko chastised, already climbing to seat himself at the nape of Druk’s neck. His travel bag was already latched in place along the dragon’s upper shoulders.

Toph just looked on, utterly incredulous. “So you’re telling me,” she started, “we’re gonna ride on a _drago_ n? As opposed to any safer method, like boat, airship, or literally any other vessel of transport you’ve got at your disposal? A firebreathing, clawed, toothed _beast_?”

Zuko blinked, shifting sheepishly on Druk, who rumbled curiously. Even Druk seemed to be glancing between the two of them, like he too was asking the same thing as Toph. _Well, are we?_

“...Yes?”

The incredulity written in Toph’s face melted, transforming into an expression of malicious glee that could’ve been predatory if it weren’t for the appreciative twinkle in her eyes. “Oh, I’ve _missed_ you, Sparky. The others were never this fun. Now move over. I want the front seat, saddle, _whatever_ on this thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko and Toph are the siblings they didn't know the other needed,, and it warms my heart. We were ROBBED 
> 
> Leave a comment or a kudos on what you think! I've never written in the Avatar-verse before; I still need to climb into the seat of what makes TLOK Zuko and Toph 'in-character' with what little we saw of them on-screen while still incorporating some of their original ATLA flair. I'd never even watched Avatar up until two months ago!


	2. The Detour

“Monkey-feathers, this thing is _fast_. I think I’ve aged a few years just being on this thing.”

It had been an hour since Druk had lifted away from the Royal Palace and taken to the sky, winging them far from the ground and across the Caldera. Or, she _thought_ they were off the Fire Nation. The scent of the sea far below had long since overtaken the scent of smoke and spice.

Toph _might’ve_ been frustrated that the only thing she could make out around her were the powerful strength of the dragon whose withers she straddled, the thrill of the heavy wing-beats through her body, but Zuko was close behind her as he guided the dragon through the sky. At the very least she could feel his heartbeat, steady and calm, as she’s come to recognize it in their adult lives.

What? Sue her, it was comforting to have at least one familiar thing going for her right now. Not that she’d ever admit it. And after, what, fifteen years of mucking it up in the Foggy Swamp, it was a bit more than jarring to suddenly be taken up and away from the earth on something that wasn’t one of Suyin’s metallic blimps. Where Toph could at least _see_ the entire ship. At least _Appa_ had some room to crawl around in his saddle. She missed that stinky old bison. 

_...And the others, I_ guess.

The former Fire Lord huffed with laughter, taking the rare opportunity of her amazement to bank low, dropping altitude so that the warm summer wind whipped their ears and hair. “Only he wants to be. He can be very stubborn.”

“Reminds me of another firebender I know,” Toph retorted flippantly, clutching the strands of mane clumping against warm scales as Druk swerved, welcoming the wind that bowed to again pull him higher into the air. “Faster than any bison we’ve ridden, for sure. _So!_ Where are we headed?”

Zuko stiffened behind her, and it was all Toph could do not to laugh at the poor old man. What, had he come all this way with the assumption she’d made some… some _itinerary_ for this? It really went to show for how long they hadn’t seen each other. “I thought you had a plan,” he fumbled, confirming her suspicion as he straightened Druk’s flight path so that they were cruising plaintively across the sky. Down below, she could hear the waves whispering their laughter to one another.

“I did. It was to get you outta your big old palace and out into the real world,” Toph nodded succinctly. “Worked, didn’t it? Besides, where’s the fun in having a whole trip planned? You get enough of that with all your lordly itineraries and scheduled politics. I went through the whole shebang when I ran for governor of Gaoling.”

“You _what_?”

“That’s besides the point and, frankly, unimportant. The world’s your oyster, Sparky; take some initiative!”

The groan that left Zuko was comical. “I hardly think that any place would be ready to receive the Fire Lord without some form of warning,” he muttered.

“Warning-schmarning,” Toph dismissed, throwing a hand up and feeling her fingertips clip against Zuko’s beard as he cleverly dived away from her _accidental_ snap of wrist. “Live it up a little. Maybe I should take you to Foggy Swamp and see how much warning the cat-gators there would give you for all the trouble they’ll give you.”

Zuko was silent a moment, and Toph figured he was thinking with that smooth brain of his. “We could visit Republic City.”

“Sorry, pal, but I think we’ve both seen enough of that place for more than this and the next Avatar’s lifetime,” countered Toph.

Below them, Druk made a sound that Toph decided to translate as dragony agreement. “See? Even your dragon’s sick of all the city hustle.”

“Druk isn’t supposed to be siding with you every time.”

“He obviously has a smart head on his shoulders. Don’t know if the same could be said for youuu- _AGH_ \--”

Toph had to clutch tight at Druk’s mane when they suddenly banked upward, fingers slipping loose as she found herself thwacking right into Zuko’s chest, and through his breathing she could just hear his smirk. She sent him a venomous glare. 

She felt him shrug. “I have the leads. I think you should be nicer to me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I do think so, yes.”

“Then give ‘em here.”

“I’m not giving you Druk’s leads, Toph Beifong.”

“If you’re gonna drive like an old blind man,” she beamed, “you ought to let the old blind woman drive. Equality, right? It’s all the rave in the Earth Kingdom these days.”

“That’s not--”

“Glad you agree, Sparky!” Toph raised up her arms, spreading them wide before folding them down and over the arms Zuko was _very much_ using to lead Druk. She pinned them tight to her sides, absolutely grinning with devilish glee when Zuko realized he’d been had. “ _Toph!_ ”

“What?” she called back. “I can’t hear you over all this _wind!”_

Her hands snatched the fiber of the reins from Zuko’s stunned hands, and drew them up as she imagined Aang always had whenever he’d encourage Appa to fly higher. With a resounding snap of thread, Druk bellowed and spiraled into a steep climb.

Toph cackled maniacally while Zuko swore to a power so high she wouldn’t be shocked if they met them up here. He was wriggling against her, trying to free his arms from her sides, but it was to no avail as they climbed higher and higher into the heavens, until Druk seemed to peter his ascent and decided to level. Through the reins she felt him chuff, and with a cheeky smirk, she dropped a hand to pat the dragon’s head appreciatively. “I knew you were a good boy.”

Zuko stole back the freed rein, taking the opportunity to seize the other right out of Toph’s hand. “It’s not safe to climb so high so quickly!”

“Oh yeah? And when have you ever been so concerned with safety?”

“You were Chief of _Police_.”

“I’m not _anymore!_ And what about swinging around buildings on metal wire sounds so safe to you, oh _Fire Lord_? The walking, fossilized epitome of teenage angst and selflessness?”

Zuko hunched, and she laughed imagining his embarrassed frown. “I’m only a few years older than you.”

 _"That’s_ what you’re upset about in that statement? Plus, maybe that rush sent all the blood to your head and got you thinking. Where are we going? Because, for one, I actually _can’t_ see what’s under us despite my amazing dragon-driving capabilities.”

Druk rumbled in the same breath as Zuko's sigh. Toph only leaned back, as casual as if she were sitting on a stump in the swamp and not a fire-breathing dragon twenty-something-thousand feet into the sky. 

Zuko racked his mind. “I hear the Great Divide has lovely cactus springs this time of year.”

“Oh spirits, help us. _No,_ Zuko. We are not going to the Great Divide.”

“Kyoshi Island?”

Toph pursed a thoughtful lip to that, at least. “I do love a good group of ladies who’ll kick your behind if I asked them to.”

“You forget that they were my bodyguards for quite a while after I became Fire Lord.”

“Not these new girls. They’re always young, cycling out every season, or something.” Absently, one of her hands reached up to inspect the unscarred side of Zuko’s face to inspect if he’d somehow managed to look even _older_ in the past fifteen years. The moment her fingertips touched base, she frowned. Spirits, was this guy on the cusp of death, or something? There wasn’t a spot on his face that wasn’t mapped with wrinkles and brittle old beard hair. 

“Is now really the best time to be looking at me,” she felt Zuko mumble under her curious fingers.

“Yes. You’re old, by the way.”

“I never would’ve guessed.” 

At that Toph peeled herself off with a bark of laughter, lurching herself forward to cross her arms across Druk’s head. She was unable to pinch away the feeling of Zuko’s stiff skin from under her fingernails. It annoyed her, that feeling, for whatever reason. Then a brilliant idea lit up her mind. “Say, Sparky,” she smirked into the wind. “What do you think about Gaoling’s capital?”

“That’s your hometown, isn’t it?” Zuko pondered curiously, sounding confused for a second before seeming to come to some magically damning revelation, if his sigh was anything to go by. “Ah. The Earth Rumble tournaments.”

“That’s right,” grinned Toph, pushing her fists together as if imagining some poor soul dense enough to take her on in the ring. “I hear it’s still kicking and seedier than ever. Just the kinda place I think we should visit.”

“I have the feeling you mean to do more than just watch them.”

“You know me so well,” Toph bowed her head in faux solemness, then cracked her chin over her shoulder. “I haven’t gotten to beat anything up since that otter-fox tried to make off with my dinner some two weeks ago. And-- _no,_ those palace wimps don’t count. Besides. I think it’s high time I reclaim my crown as the champion of that joint. They gotta respect their roots.”

Zuko muttered something Toph didn’t bother to try to decipher, resolving in her mind that Zuko was completely, utterly, one-hundred percent in support of her decision. “And _you’re_ gonna be right there with me.”

“I can’t be recognized there,” Zuko pressed. He shifted on Druk’s withers, and Toph could feel the mount beginning to steer in a different direction. “It wouldn’t be seemly of me.”

“Seemly? What's _that_ matter?”

“I’m an ambassador of peace, Toph. An Earth Rumble isn’t exactly refined.”

“You’ve spent too many seasons holed up in that Palace with your daughter, y’know that?”

“And you’ve spent too many talking with the frog-squirrels in the swamp.”

Toph kicked at Zuko’s legs good-naturedly, snickering. Druk only warbled a low sound, the stride of his wing-beats deepening as they maintained course for the southern Earth Kingdom continent.

* * *

Zuko’s grip on Druk’s leads had been especially firm the entire drive over the rest of the sea, unwilling to let Toph snatch them away again and plunge them into unquestionable death. However much he trusted Druk’s general instinct for self-perseverance, he didn’t trust Toph a leaf’s depth not to do something zany at the reins. 

The sun had set by the time they entered the Earth Kingdom. Toph was correct about one thing; Druk’s speed was nothing to underestimate. Once, on a decent sun, he’d set off from the Palace and arrived at Republic City for a conference with the city council by sunhigh the same day. Though, Druk had been a bit testy the morning after-- sore wings, and all. Zuko had been receptive, sneaking the dragon an extra possum-chicken he’d.. hmm, _silently borrowed_ from Sokka’s icebox.

They had stopped briefly on a small myriad of vacant islands to rest and water Durk before continuing, passing over the Omashu and the wheat-grass fields that hid in the shadow of the state’s mountains. South, they knew, was Gaoling, in the deciduous forests and hills at the foot of the plains.

They’d passed over a number of smaller villages, interconnected by tracks that made Zuko ill to see. “Kuvira’s work,” he’d said bitterly, earning a bemused scowl out of Toph. “We’re passing over some small merchant towns. The Empire’s surrendered, for the most part; but there’s still remnants of their treachery all over the rural Earth Kingdom. Tracks Empire trains used to control them, guard posts.”

“Oh I know all about Kuvira,” Toph snorted. “Gave metalbenders an awful name is all she’s done. If I wanted _that_ to happen I’d have done it myself seventy years ago; no one gets to sully my creation but _me_. These aren’t any towns that’re still being bullied by Empire lackeys, are they? Gaoling had a pretty awful case of those kids a few weeks ago.”

Zuko scrutinized the town they were passing over. It was decently small, quaint, even. Accounts of Fire Nation soldiers who had defended Empire targets reported that towns who had turned themselves into Kuvira had been turned into sites of Empire propaganda. The rustic buildings below bore no such things, aside from the tracks that ran along its outer perimeter, undoubtedly linking it to the major line Kuvira’s army had once used. 

“Not this one,” Zuko revealed, grateful. He wasn’t sure Izumi would really appreciate it if he decided to take a town back on his own, with one Master Beifong in tow. “We can check the other villages, follow the track.” 

“I just _had_ to humour you,” Toph muttered, crossing her arms. “Go on, whatever, do your survey run. Not like I can see any trouble myself from this high up.”

“It’s for the better,” Zuko replied, a hint of apology in his tone, adjusting Durk’s path to part from the direct line to Gaoling’s borders to follow the railroad instead.

He couldn’t _not_ check on these sites. Even under night’s drapes, where his eyesight failed, Druk would be able to perceive any sign of danger on the earth down below. 

It was a bit longer before they flew over a town of a decently similar size to the previous, though this one was refurbished with newer, more modern buildings. Closed merchant stalls filled the streets. Only a few lit windows lightened the dark untouched by the lanterns filling the town’s square. Zuko almost thought he could see a little boy in one of them, staring in silent wonder up into the sky as Druk soared away against the stars.

As they passed the peaceful town by, Zuko wondered if he ought to turn around and stop them for the night. He was certain he’d spotted an inn there, near the heart of the village--

He was unable to finish that thought. Druk’s attention seemed to have seized on something on the horizon line, a wary bellow rattling from deep in his chest as he made an instinctive bank in that direction. Zuko narrowed his eyes, unable to see what Druk saw under the guise of night. “What is it?”

“A flying hog-monkey,” Toph, who seemed to have dozed slightly during Zuko’s silent patrol of the plains villages, remarked sourly. “Spirits, I don’t know, Sparky.”

“Not you-- _Druk.”_

The dragon in question had hastened his pace, dropping yards of air so hastily that Zuko thought his heart would get stuck at the back of his mouth. Toph, too, seemed alarmed by Druk’s abrupt shift in demeanor, clutching one hand against his hair and the other gripping at Zuko’s tense arm. “What’s gotten into this thing! Hey! Dragon! Slow it down, would you? You’ll fling us right off- _-hyack!_ ”

Druk veered right, _hard_ , sending Toph thumping backwards into Zuko as he maintained a firm hold of Druk’s reins. In the same moment, he hunched in his shoulders, encasing Toph between his arms as the dragon’s flight zig-zagged earthward- towards a thin grove of persimmon trees. No one was getting flung off of Druk if he had anything to say about it. “Hold on tight-”

“What do you _think_ I’m doing, you idiot!”

Tears began to stream from the corners of Zuko’s eyes as Druk suddenly angled into a swift descent, and he hardly had the moment to register what the dragon was about to do before branches were snapping all around them as the dragon broke through the trees, casting a funnel of flame that blazed bright in the night. 

“Agni's flames, _what_ \--” he had just begun to swear, before the sounds of startled shrieks and fire crackling leaf-mold reached his ears, hidden under Druk’s terrible baying. 

Below, encircled by bandits loaded onto satomobile jeeps was a merchant nursing an arm to his chest. Bruises bloomed dark and painful across his face forearms-- but he did not look at the bandits hollering with alarm as Druk blazed a circle around the merchant and his cart of goods. He stared straight up at Zuko, mouth ajar in soundless astonishment.

Druk dropped down into the clearing, landing squarely atop a satomobile that was quickly abandoned by its driver, who cried out in shock as a giant dragon tail came down to thwack them aside. Zuko wasted no time in leaping from his place at Druk’s neck, entering the rising circle of flames as the wheels outside screeched away. Toph was next to him in a heartbeat, throwing up her arms in the same moment as a heavy crop of boulders shot out of the earth, sending the last lot of panicking bandits off with some bruises they’d be wincing about for a few days yet.

“Let them flee,” Zuko ordered Druk, who was making snapping at stragglers left behind in their group's manic escape from the whirlwind of red fire and fangs that had rained down on them from above. “They won’t return.”

“You’re going to deny Durk his rightful dinner?” Toph barked from somewhere next to him, sounding genuinely irked on _his_ dragon's behalf. But Zuko was already making a beeline for the injured merchant, who was struggling to sit himself upright in the back of his wagon. “I’d say he’s earned a few good bites of bandit.”

“He doesn’t eat bandit.”

“The way he’s sulking right now says otherwise.”

“Th-Thank you, sir,” the merchant trembled as Zuko’s hands gingerly reached over to support him, minding the ugly, flowering bruises darkening the man’s arm. Toph suddenly materialized beside Zuko, a brow perked expectantly. “A-And ma’am.” 

“Who _were_ those rockheads?” Said _ma’am_ demanded. “Kuvira’s men?”

“N-No-- or-- I-I don’t think so,” the merchant revealed, eyes drawn so wide the white circled his irises. “None of them were metalbending--”

Zuko willed the merchant to be still with a steady tense of his fingers on his collarbone. This poor man was positively shivering with terror. “What’s your name, young man?” 

“Junho,” the merchant swallowed. “I-I was only carrying the delivery in to Shoshun village-- I didn’t stop in Hametsu because they have, just-- an _awful_ raccoon-pigeon problem right now and didn’t want to chance them ruinin--”

“You don’t need to explain yourself to us,” Zuko consoled, satisfied when the tension knotting his shoulders eased slightly. “Where is the Shoshun village from here?”

“Far,” Junho whimpered. “I was planning to reach it by sunrise. But my ostrich-horse, she ran off when the bandits came.” He winced. “..And one of the wheel axles was broken when they rammed us.”

“Then we’ll help you get you and your goods to Shoshun.”

“We will?” Toph echoed, dumbfounded.

“Oh, thank you so much!” Junho flustered, trying to toss his hands together - wincing something awful when he seemed to recall his wounded arm. “My father is depending on this delivery to keep our farm! Many blessings upon you both!”

Junho looked up, and squinted thoughtfully. Then widened his eyes. Then squinted again, and pointed his good hand in astonishment at Zuko-- or, rather, at Zuko’s face. “ _You!_ You’re the--”

“His lordliness, the royal hotman self--”

“Toph.”

“And I’m the greatest earthbender to walk this sorry ground. And we just saved your butt.” 

Appropriately, Junho fainted.

An... _expected_ reaction, honestly, but it still startled Zuko. He looked over his shoulder at Toph, who was poorly attempting to hide her sniff of amusement.

“Look what you did, Sparky.”

“You can’t hold me responsible for this!”

“I can’t? I’m sorry to tell you but I already did. If we want to get technical, we can blame Druk.”

“We’re not going to do that. He did the right thing tonight, saving a man’s life.”

Warm air blew against the back of Zuko’s head, and Druk was there, hovering purposefully behind him. The fire-circle around them had been vanquished, likely by Druk who had estimated that it was no longer needed to protect his charges. Zuko sighed and raised a hand, placing it wearily on top of the dragon’s snout. “We’re making a brief detour to Shoshun Village,” he said with finality. “Druk will be able to carry Junho’s wagon.”

Toph regarded him flatly. “Was your lovely life-changing trip with Katara filled with impromptu turnip deliveries, too? Or am I just that special?”

Zuko wisely decided to ignore Toph’s jab as he helped to settle Junho’s motionless form over Durk’s back, making certain that he wouldn’t be tossed like a ragdoll at every twist and turn to Shoshun. He frowned at the crushed jeep abandoned by the bandits, tossed onto its driver-side by Druk's overzealous talons. _Good Druk_ , he thought wryly. _Odd that they would leave it here. Bandits are often stingy with what satomobiles they can manage to get their hands on._

..But then again, on second thought, Zuko wouldn't want to be driving off in a jeep that had been crunched under Durk's weight, either. Not to mention that it was beginning to billow black smoke from beneath its crimped hood.

With a sharp weave of his hand, Zuko willed down the flames burning inside the satomobile. “We need to get this man to a hospital, and his goods to safety. We’ll be able to leave for Gaoling when the sun rises.”

“You firebenders and your sunrises,” Toph griped as she climbed up the side of Druk’s head, slapping Zuko’s helping hand away. “Let’s get on with it. Just know that if we miss the Rumble before this season's trials are up, it's you who's gonna get pummeled into the soil."  
  


* * *

Bojing fumbled forward, clasping desperately at the folds of fabric taut to his hips as a heavy hand pushed flat against his back, forcing him into the room.

It felt as though a raven-toad had climbed up the length of his esophagus, its wings thrumming an uncomfortably quick rhythm likened to a manic heartbeat as he fought to gain purchase on the air that was too thick with dust and too sharp with the scent of what he prayed was only rust. 

Sickly white light sifted into the room through the broken slats of the floor above, a cantina hostel once fashioned for traders along the nearest auxiliary route long since abandoned. Now, it was filled only with bandits and triad mobsters. Or, at the very least, those with the cunning and skill to earn themselves a place in such a cutthroat establishment.

Ahead of him, at the furthest reach of the room where the light from above hardly touched, he could make out the dangerous glint of buckles strapped across deep, sage-grey boots. The raven-toad in his throat suddenly seemed to find its peace as his heart gave a tremor of apprehension. 

“Little Bojing,” a voice sleek as silver cooed from the shadows of the den. Each word was so sharp, so punctuated that it left his ears stinging, as though a blade had carved along the cartilage with the intent to scar. “It has been brought to my attention that the inventory you brought in tonight is less than your unit promised.”

“Y-Yes, tóu fěi Haoming,” Bojing swallowed, bowing deep from his hip, body arched so low he feared a simple breeze might send him stumbling face-first into the dirty floor. “Our party-”

“Our?”

“Mine,” Bojing remedied in haste, blinking away a bullet of sweat rolling down the curve of his brow into his eyes. “ _My_ personal party. The farmer’s boy on the trail south of the Shoshun Village outpost-- we were unable to retrieve the supplies we anticipated at the drop-off at moonhigh.”

Through the silence of the den, accentuated by the stillness of the cantina above that could only mean the men and women above were listening in on bated breath to the happenings below, the rhythmic tapping of a fingernail against stone sounded like a lethal heartbeat. Slow, meticulous - the countdown of a clock whose ticking would end in either life or death.

It was rare, no, _unspoken of_ to fail tóu fěi Haoming. Her reputation for dealing with anything and _anyone_ substandard was washed in blood, rendering widows far and wide across this side of the Earth Kingdom and then some. Bojing knew the severity of his failure, the cost-- but he had some firmer ground to stand on-- an _excuse_ , of all things. Like they were ever good for Haoming before, choked on the tongues of those who had failed her before.

“The Shoshun Village outpost reported clear passage the morning of your failed attempt, when the farmer passed, unguarded and alone,” Haoming tutted from her post. Bojing dared not raise his gaze; he had heard a dastardly rumor that the last man to meet the Lady’s gaze had not even the time to make out the colour of her irises before a blade had crossed his throat. “You mean to tell me that the old man alone fended off the Yè Suǒ?”

_“It was a dragon!”_

Bojing wished he could swallow the word back down as it crawled its way out of his throat, hot and raw and as dangerous as the fable’s flame itself. The shocking vision of flint-red eyes, a funnel of wild orange flame obscuring the paths of their jeeps, a roar so deep and guttural that Bojing had feared the fire itself was howling - never before in his life had he seen something so horrific but nonetheless magnificent. 

The dragons were _gone._ Extinct, vanquished by the Fire Nation over one hundred seventy years ago by Lord Sozin’s decree. His grandfather would spin him stories of the glorious but deadly masters, the original firebenders.

Haoming would not believe him. No Yè Suǒ had all the way to this decrepit place, aside from those burned and wounded by the fangs and claws of the winged demon itself. He had a hard time believing what he saw himself, thinking he’d taken some bad sip of cactus juice from the Si Wong.

Even now, he would think himself mad if it weren’t for the scales he had palmed before fleeing from the fight, scorching-hot, even when padded and protected in his left pocket.

“A dragon-” he tried again, holding it up for Haoming to see as if it were his token to live. In a way, it was. “It attacked us while we were stealing the cargo from the boy’s wagon. We-- we weren’t able to get the whole stock.”

Haoming was, stunningly, silent despite the outlandish nature of his claim. He could feel her gaze through the darkness as he shakily opened the pouch containing three sharp-edged scales, each the colour of bloody death. They sat in his palm, and he swore he could see a mirage shimmer the air above them.

His breath hitched somewhere in his chest when the sounds of boots clicked ahead of him, drawing nearer with cutting exactness. Bojing wasn’t sure how long he had been holding his breath when a gloved pair of fingers, a thumb and index, curved around his trembling chin and forced his face upward.

Her face was still covered with shadows so deep and dark that Bojing had to wonder if the darkest spirits of the underworld were leaking into this reality, choosing Haoming as its manifestation. Hadn’t that happened in Republic City to that man from the Northern Water Tribe, years ago? Was it happening again right now, in this room? Oh, _Guanyin_ , save him--

“Tell me,” the cartel head clipped, taking Bojing away from his helpless thoughts as she stole a dragon-scale away from his shivering fingers. She inspected it as if it were merely some sort of interesting river-pebble. “What compelled you to believe that trial by fire was an excuse to abandon your post?”

Bojing’s throat clenched. “Lady Haoming, forgive my mistake,” he pleaded, rocking forward so suddenly that his weight shifted and he had to pick himself up from the floor when his elbows failed to catch his bow. His forehead touched the earth, delicate-- humbled. “I only-” 

“There is only one dragon left in this existence,” Haoming continued, pacing a calculated circle around the downed young man. A buzzard-wasp flying low around its prey in the midst of a dune where no one was around to hear his wails. The scale gripped between her fingers glinted as she lifted it up to a dusty beam of light. “Belonging to Lord Zuko of the Fire Nation.”

Bojing was so focused on counting every tiny clot of grit an inch beneath his nose that he could hardly hear, let alone comprehend, what Haoming was insinuating. 

The memory of the attack was so chaotic in his mind’s eye. Red and roaring and reeking of singed skin and hair, a merchant farmer’s shocked cry and- another voice. _Two_ . Fuzzy and fleeting in the midst of fiery mayhem-- but _there_.

“Th-then it was the Fire Lord,” he panted, feeling his blood rush cold despite the heat of mortification bubbling beneath his skin. “He came down from above, to protect the farmer and his crop. Shoshun could not have seen him - he came from the sky, the- the western horizon!”

Haoming regarded him as if he were a messy smear of mud on her favourite robe. Her pacing had ceased, and he knew not whether to feel relieved or frightful still.

“And did you leave any trace of the Yè Suǒ at the scene of the ambush?” She inquired curtly. 

Bojing’s tongue went dry in his mouth. “One of our jeeps was destroyed,” he spoke into the floor.

“But still recognizable as a satomobile?” 

“Well, yes--”

“A satomobile belonging to the Yè Suǒ cartel? Smuggled and fitted with accessories used _only_ by us? Traceable artifacts, if one took the time to properly investigate them?”

He knew his mistake. He knew it but before he could register its depth a hard-edged heel was rammed into the side of his neck, effectively collapsing his prostrating pose as he crumbled to the floor. He felt no puncture, no blood gushing from his throat as his hands flew up to instinctively protect it - but he could not inhale to give his lungs respite as he stared up into the cool, unimpressed eyes of the Yè Suǒ leader.

“Then you know the severity of your impudence,” Haoming snipped, beckoning from the shadows a line of heavily-built men. She turned away as they rushed Bojing, obscuring her slender face in the den’s cruel black shadow.

“Kill him. And his crew.” 

Bojing’s eyes flared wide. “Wait!” he wheezed as huge hands seized his shoulders, his calves, every appendage that would give him a fighting chance against the crewmen dragging him from Haoming’s den. “I-I can tell you more! The dragon-- Lord Zuko and his companion, they-”

The door slammed shut. 

Left alone in the dim of the den, Haoming’s fingers curled beneath her jaw as she sat back in her seat, as if tired after a particularly frustrating day. On all accounts, it _was_. In her hand, still, the vermillion scale found itself pinched, held up to the light. It was warm. Warm as if the power of the sun itself was trying to burst it from the inside-out; perhaps it was. The dragons were the original masters of fire and flame.

She knew Bojing would swiftly meet his end at the hand of her men. Such insolence, such lack of tact - it could never be utilized by the Yè Suǒ, and Bojing was an errant loon for even considering the notion that she might allow him to live for his ineptitude.

Any evidence of a Yè Suǒ attack was to be burned and stomped to ash and dust before they left the scene. They couldn’t have any form of government, no matter how diminutive, learn of their doings. As far as the Earth Kingdom was concerned, the strings of robbery in the states were simply rogue bandits taking advantage of the disarray in the country. 

Oh, how thwarted the simpleton men in power were. So keen to understate anything that could be fixed with a wave of a hand and a couple gold coins, they were.

A _dragon_ . Of all things, a _dragon_ had come to personally ravage the ambush that would have kept Yè Suǒ triads fed for weeks to come. And if her intel had been correct (and she would accept _nothing_ other than indisputable fact from her scouts), the boy had been carting gold, too; his father’s taxes meant for Shoshun Hall.

A shame, that the Yè Suǒ was robbed of such riches. Haoming would have fancied something nice for herself with that merchant’s tax money. 

And now, they have been discovered. Because of Bojing’s botched judgment. By some feat of miracle, Lord Zuko had discovered them and derailed their scheme, seizing one of their satomobiles to gather intel on them. Haoming would _not_ allow for this to happen again; and she would not allow for their failure to turn into their undoing. She had come too far.

“I see, Fire Lord,” she uttered as she curled the scale beneath a long black thumbnail. “Your cunning precedes you. Those who confront and steal from the Yè Suǒ do not live to share their experiences the next dawn. It just won't do that you’ve obstructed one of our ambushes, using a dragon to overpower us. You’re a royal old fool to think your actions will go without consequence, that you are infallible.”

A gargling scream spliced the musty air. A taut-lipped smirk fell over Haoming’s features. “You cannot continue to live so long as you know we exist. Such unfortunate dirty work. And _just_ as the world was regaining some semblance of balance again. How sad.”

But Haoming hardly sounded sorrowful at all. The fire-scale was tucked neatly into a pocket, and she stood. 

“Even your fearsome dragon will be unable to protect you when we see you next.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko and Toph have no idea what underworld power they've just meddled with. For all they know, those guys are just some random bandits looking for a pretty penny. Or, turnips. But probably not.
> 
> Let me know your thoughts! 
> 
> ALSO-- can anyone spot out the little gaming easter egg in the chapter?


	3. The Rumble

Dawn came quickly enough, and before the sun could climb off the horizon, Druk was already airborne, flying south from Shoshun Village. 

Last night wasn’t the detour that Toph was expecting on her life-changing field trip, but one that she was almost willing to humor because that Junho guy was just-- so pitiful. He’d made it to a healer just fine; even if he woke up halfway through the flight to the hospital spluttering about mortgages and dragons-- promptly saw how high up from the ground he was, and the two practical legends flanking him front-and-back, then fainted again. That had been funny enough to curb Toph’s pointed complaints - for an hour, tops. 

“We’ll be at the Gaoling capital by sunhigh,” Zuko was saying behind her. “We’ll walk in; Druk isn’t a fan of being left alone in cities.”

Toph wrinkled her nose. “What is he, socially anxious?”

“It’s more for the citizens than for him.”

“Whatever you say.” Toph shrugged, deciding for herself that the dragon was _definitely_ socially anxious. It was _Zuko’s_ dragon, after all; seventy years wouldn’t make her forget the socially inept teenager she’d met at the closure of the Hundred Year War. She still saw bits of that Zuko in the old man behind her; the occasional stutter of a nervous heartbeat, the awkward silence of someone trying to wrap their tongue around something they didn’t really know how to say.

That, or he was just _old_ and his heart was _old_ and his dusty brain was doing its best to turn the cogs trying to find what it was he wanted to say. 

But the former was a much more comfortable thing to think.

Time flew almost as quickly as Druk did in the final stretch to Gaoling. One thing that really changed the flying experience was the fact that Druk flew so swiftly that Toph seemed to perpetually squint against the wind. Zuko had even warned her about keeping her lips sealed more often than not, relaying to her in a haunted voice he’d accidentally ingested one too many bugs in his lifetime as a dragonrider. Toph had only snorted and asked him if he’d done that by b talking to himself, or to Druk. He’d completely refused to answer.

True to Zuko’s word, by the time Druk touched base in a wooded clearing on the capital’s outskirts, the sun was beaming down onto them from its summit in the sky. She was blind but she could always tell where the sun was in the sky based on where it fell onto her and how strongly. Not even the shaded, leaf-infested canopy could skew her sense of time; the warmth of the leaf-mold underfoot was rather telling.

“Seems quiet today,” Toph remarked as she reached past the tangled roots of the grove, feeling for the footwork of the busybodies inside the Gaoling city. “Well _good._ Not like I need anybody recognizing me anyway.” 

Zuko paused where he was smoothing his hand over the bridge of Druk’s snout. “How long has it been since you were last here?”

“Oh, I dunno, fifty years. Somewhere around there.”

“And you think people will recognize you still?”

“They’ll recognize _you,_ won’t they, mister Fire Lord?”

“Former. And I don’t think that’s the same issue.”

“As far as I was told this stupid city made me its pride and joy once they heard I invented metalbending. Once they began to believe the Beifongs actually _had_ a daughter at all,” Toph retorted sharply. It wasn’t until after she’d invented metalbending that anybody here even knew she existed. It was hard not to feel bitter about that.

When she’d met her father for the first time after the war in Cranefish Town before it grew into Republic City, she’d learned that he and her mother had separated when she’d run away. She knew she was responsible for putting her family through so much; and for that, she’d tried to make some kind of effort to come home to Gaoling every once in a blue moon. But every time, every single time, she’d left unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Her father didn’t know how to be her _father_ anymore; not that he’d done a real _stand-up job_ of it before, though.

She’d grown up on Appa’s saddle like the rest of her friends. She’d grown up founding Republic City, not wanting to live in what was left of the shattered home life here. 

Toph Beifong had grown up and as much as her father tried, it was still too stifling to stay here for more than days at a time. Her closet here was too full of skeletons she didn’t feel like tossing aside every time she wanted to put on a new robe after telling the house staff to, kindly, shove it and buck off.

And as far as gossip went, Gaoling had turned her into a legend: something untouchable and unfeasible. It annoyed her. 

Yeah _, okay,_ she _liked_ the fame. She _liked_ the fact that people talked about her and revered her as the harbinger of metalbending. You didn’t slam out palm-sized metal statues of yourself to impress new acquaintances to be humble about your accomplishments. Still, she didn’t really _care_ for her home state anymore. She hadn’t for a long time. She thought she’d made that pretty clear to the Avatar and her ragtag team when they’d encouraged her to run for governor of the place; she’d done it to stop one of Kuvira’s lackeys from stealing the position for their shabby Earth Empire scheme.

 _Ugh. Forget all that_ . She wasn’t here to lament on those old grievances. For spirit’s sake, she’d done enough angsting over it when she was a kid to fill three whole lifetimes; she wanted to live out the rest of _this_ lifetime the way _she_ wanted to. And _that_ was kicking earthbender butt and taking names. 

“I know where to head to find the _questionable characters_ who’ll know a thing or two about an Earth Rumble,” Toph said, cracking her knuckles high over her head. “They’re denser than rock but the food in their area’s not half-bad. We should go to the noodle house on Tunxi. They've even got spicy stuff just for you.”

Zuko shifted slightly. “I take it we’re heading someplace unsavory.”

“That’s a _cute_ word for it,” Toph grunted. “Why?”

“I’m not sure it would be wise for.. _us_ to go someplace like _that._ ”

Was he worried about his scar giving him away as the old Fire Lord, or something? Someone worth a pretty penny to the cretins in dark alleys? Oh, give her a _break_ . Would she have to hold his hand for this whole trip? _Stars._ It’s not like anyone here would _care_. 

...Aside from interfamilial stigmas, propaganda, and the impressions that the Fire Nation had left imprinted on the Earth Kingdom for generations, of course. But all those trifles from the war had ended so _long_ ago. The citizens around here would all be problematic idiots to try to drudge something up about it now-- especially with Zuko. After all, Zuko had been the one to help _stop_ his own father, _helping_ Aang to end the war. That kinda thing was apparently taken pretty seriously over there in the Fire Nation. It even had some weight here in the Earth Kingdom.

Maybe Zuko _did_ have a point. She wouldn’t put it past half the rockheads in the shadowy alleyways of Gaoling to put a knife to his neck and demand all the coins he had on his person, just for being dressed in a decently nice robe. 

Frost it all, _fine_. She’d humor him just this once. “Then we’ll just mask it, for spirits’ sake,” Toph scowled, marching over to him and snatching a random article of clothing from his satchel. She shoved it into his fumbling arms. “What’re you worried about, anyway? Someone telling your daughter you’re off watching underground fights without her permission?”

“...No.”

“Liar.”

“Any attention can be dangerous,” Zuko pointed out, like it would somehow make her budge. He ought to know better than to try. It was beginning to sound like he was learning though, because that rustling meant he was starting to assess the piece of casualwear. “A Fire Nation noble can be an expensive bargaining tool.”

“I’m glad that you’ve finally gotten some feelings of self-worth in the past few decades,” Toph cheekily retorted, “but Earth Rumble’s not a political event. Not even close. It’s just a bunch of people mutually chucking rocks at each other. We’ll be _fine._ Because we’re not some ordinary run-of-the-mill benders. Are you _not_ the former Fire Lord? And am I _not_ the crown earthbender of this stupid nation?”

Zuko sighed, but he was moving, carefully wrapping the clothing around his head until his voice was slightly muffled by it. Whatever made him happy. “I’m only worried that we’ll end up in more trouble than we’re willing to find.”

Toph smirked darkly. “So you’re saying you’re willing to get into _some_ kinds of trouble?”

“Wait, that’s _not_ what I--” 

A sputtering Zuko didn’t get to finish before Toph had picked them both up on a crumbly wave of earth, carrying them out of the grove and in towards town. Druk only warbled a lighthearted good-bye before thudding to the ground with a content rumble, offering no help to his complaining rider whatsoever as he was taken away by rogue earth.

Toph was really beginning to take a liking to that dragon.

* * *

The Earth Rumble was as heady, sweaty, and seedy as Toph remembered. And she was _thrilled_.

If not by the sheer rawness of everything then because Zuko was positively squirming beside her, fidgeting like he didn’t know if he should be guarding his pockets or trying to manifest a pair of eyes in the back of his head to watch out for troublemakers. He’d managed to somehow fasten that fabric she’d thrown at him earlier into a mask, or something, around his head - enough to obscure his scar to his comfort, at least. He’d murmured something or another about looking like a sandbender, which kind of negated the whole complete discretion thing he’d been meaning to go for - but she didn’t feel like pointing it out and watching him spiral trying to find some other better solution.

In contrast to his carefulness, _she’d_ just tossed on a pair of glasses that didn’t fit right that, according to Zuko, were dark enough to hide her very much blind eyes from any onlooker. She didn’t have to worry about being recognized just because she was old and supposedly wore some specific type of _green_ , whatever _that_ meant.

He’d been hard-pressed to stick close to her side as they entered the basement of the abandoned warehouse they had overheard some teenagers whispering about earlier in the day. All around them, voices _hooped_ and _hollered_ and _boo’ed_ as rock was ripped from the grounds of the arena and crashed into their targets. There were none of those measly little _discs_ those pro-benders used back in Republic City; this was _real_ bending.

Taking advantage of Zuko’s cluelessness, Toph led him through the milling audience as the round finished, heading for the only person who could have been the host. This particular breed of guys all carried their weight around like they were some top dog; they all stood stiff and stolid, probably trying to give off the impression that all he ever ate for breakfast were raw komodo-chicken eggs. _Compensation’s what it is,_ she thought darkly as she stuck a finger up in the host’s direction.

“Get us behind that fence,” she demanded without waiting for acknowledgement from the guy, or from Zuko who just seemed to realize what she was doing. She felt his palm close around her shoulder, like he was inwardly beseeching her to _not_ throw them into an underground fighting ring where the fighters were decades their junior and really fancied a good rock-chucking. She had half a mind to bite at his knuckles and see what kind of sound he’d make.

And then this guy had the gall to _laugh._

“Sorry, grandma,” he snickered, voice as pleasant as a cat-gator’s malicious rumble, “only _real_ benders can get in the circle. You and your friend will have to settle for just watching tonight. Stakes are too high to let some old-timers come in and slow this week’s championship; just doesn’t seem fair to _ol’ Ikem_. Maybe if the crowd lulls we can get you two down there to give the guys some target practice.”

It was suddenly _very_ appealing to earthbend some rock up from beneath this idiot Ikem’s feet and knock him upside the head-- and she was just about ready to do exactly that when Zuko came up beside her. He was as stiff with indignance as she was. “We’ll be participating,” he said sternly, and the telltale jingling of coins rang like a sparrow-lark's warble in Toph’s ears. Ah, the perks of having _royalty_ around again!

Ikem, too, seemed stunned at Zuko’s bribe. He hastily palmed the bag of coins, and Toph could just feel the sinister, sickly-sweet smile on this slimey host’s face as he _graciously_ bid them into the participant wing to enter the ring in the following set of rounds. “Team brawls are up next. Be my _guests_.” 

They didn’t make it ten strides past the host before Zuko spun on her, bending down to her level. The air shimmered warm around him, like the heat that rolled off a dune in the Si Wong desert. She frowned up into his face. “You gotta cool off, Sparky. You’ll set all that bristle on your face ablaze.”

“I’m not an _earthbender,_ Toph!”

“So what?”

“I can’t participate in an Earth Rumble!”

“Says _who?”_

Zuko made a strangled sound, and she liked to think he was cradling his head in his hands. Spirits, she almost felt sorry for the man. _Almost_ . “Calm _down,_ Sparky. They don’t know that you’re not an earthbender. _Besides._ Sounds like since they’ve modernized this thing, fist fights have been in demand. And, I think I can throw enough boulders for the both of us to get out of this thing unscathed.”

“I’ve just watched a man get nearly castrated by two pillars of earth.”

“Then you’ll just have to be sure to keep your feet closer together than he did. Easy.”

The telling howl of a man in pain rang across the dingy stadium. A jubilant crowd jeered.

“He sounded like a real wimp,” Toph determined bluntly. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Zuko frowned. “Throwing our backs out in the middle of the fight?”

“Excuses.” Toph flapped a hand dismissively at Zuko. “You’ve already paid the man. If you really didn’t wanna do this, you shouldn’t have forked up the coins.”

Toph knew she’d won. She could sense Zuko deflating in front of her, shoulders hitching as a hand came up to pinch, classically, at the spot between his eyes. Beneath his tense exterior, though, she could tell his heart was thrumming in his chest: lively, even anticipating, if she wanted to reach so far. 

_Old man’s still got some fire left in him,_ she thought proudly to herself. _Figuratively. Literally would get us in a whole boatload of trouble in here._

“What did you mean when you say you’ll throw the boulders for the both of us?” Zuko prompted, finally coming to terms with his fate.

“I mean exactly what I said. They’ll be so busy trying not to get knocked out by my rocks they’ll hardly notice you’re not bending at all.”

Zuko hummed. “Then I can--”

He was interrupted by the aggressive chiming of the arena ring, signalling the closure of this series of brawls and welcoming the next. That sketchy Ikem guy had taken up a place somewhere above the arena, and the buzzing static of his cheap microphone was enough to make them both wince. “Next up! We have two very _special_ contenders new to the ring; grandma, grandpa, why don’t you two come out here and join us on the ring, huh?”

A set of knuckles cracked beside Toph’s ear. She couldn’t help contain her wild grin. Oh, they were going to absolutely _whip_ some stupid earthbender _butt_ tonight. And from the way Zuko kept in stride with her, the familiar stubbornness she knew and, frankly, _loved_ emanating off of him in waves (but you'd never get her to admit that, ever). He was thinking the exact same thing she was.

All’s good until you injure a man’s pride. Or should she say _dishonor_ him instead? This was Zuko, after all; the ultimate pioneer of all that weird Fire Nation honor business. 

“The Blind Bandit takes the ring again,” she drawled under her breath, flexing her fingers in front of her and rolling back her shoulders which clicked satisfyingly back into place. 

She felt Zuko’s hand on her shoulder as the host’s voice crackled back to life over them. “Why don’t you two introduce yourselves, eh?”

“I’m-” Toph stopped, scowling when she remembered Zuko’s plea for discretion. _Ugh_ . Being considerate was so tiring. The Blind Bandit would need to be shelved for now. “ _I_ am the _Swamp Witch_ ; and I’m about to knock your earthbender _wanna-be’s_ all the way to the hungry cat-gators in the Foggy Swamp!”

A chorus of appreciation and bemusement rippled through the crowd.

“I am the _Jasmine Dragon_ ,” Zuko spoke up beside her, and Toph couldn’t help the affectionate quirk of her lip at the homage. “And I’m going to serve you tea made from rocks-- rocks so _bitter_ that you’ll wish you never set foot in this ring!”

 _Aaaand_ he ruined it. Spirits _almighty._ Who let this man lead the Fire Nation again? It wasn’t his silver tongue that saved the Fire Nation, _that’s_ for sure.

Ikem’s voice buzzed again, spitting fuzz and static like a malfunctioning firecracker. Seriously, was a fire ferret nibbling through the wire connecting this guy to the system? “Joining them in the ring are _Northern Giant_ and _Shipwreck Shan_!”

Two others stomped down into the circle; one a huge, heavy-footed woman, the other a short, stoutly man who stood like he was trying not to step too heavily on a boil at the base of his heel. She took a moment to scrutinize him and realized it wasn’t that-- he just lacked a foot on the left side altogether, replaced by a wooden peg. 

Whoever these crazy kids were, the crowd was absolutely _roaring_ for them. 

“Sounds like we’ve got fan favourites,” commented Zuko. Toph whistled back at him, throwing up her wrists with her palms facing her. “How ‘bout we show ‘em how the old-timers do things?”

“Don’t worry, you two,” the woman-- the Northern Giant-- growled from across the way. “We’ll be sure to get you two home before bedtime.” 

“ _Aheh_ \-- yeah, _yeah,_ what _she_ said!” Shipwreck Shan chortled, voice thick like he’d just swallowed a whole carton of jelly. “ _Get it?_ Get the joke? ‘Cuz you’re _old!_ ”

“Oh,” Zuko growled so lowly that Toph had to wonder if he’d spoken at all. “They’re getting destroyed.”

The arena bell tolled.

Toph tore generous chunks of earth up from behind Shipwreck Shan, yanking inward to hurl them forward- knocking the stubby man forward with a yelp of astonishment. The crowd reacted similarly, stunned caterwauls quickly turning into thrilled howls. 

In the same breath she pivoted her ankle, in rhythm with Zuko as he braced against the Northern Giant’s advance. A block of earth rose up to block him from an impending barrage of pebbles, and to any onlooker, it would appear as if he were earthbending it all himself.

Shipwreck Shan was quickly back in action, furling his fingers into the ring floor and raising the field, snapping it as if he were trying to get gravel out of his mother’s favourite mat. Toph rode a wave of crumbling rock out of the way, turning Shan’s work against him by deflecting the wave of earth with a twitch of her thumb. It swung back his way, and he scorpioned up onto his shoulders before flopping gracelessly onto his face. The siren wailed; he’d hit the wall. 

“What was that about bedtimes, kiddo?” Toph snarled sardonically.

Zuko was advancing on the Northern Giant, taking the earthbender by surprise by advancing with fists and kicks, driving her backwards as she tried to draw earth up beneath his feet - only for him to weasel himself out of the way each time. Toph whistled sharply, and Zuko swung his hands low and arced them up to his chest, and a thick wall of earth burst from the ground at his toes, clocking the Northern Giant square in the chin. She flew backwards, collapsing against the wall of the ring with a groan. 

For a heartbeat, the entire arena was stunned to silence. Zuko’s heartbeat thrilled alongside hers, and suddenly her hand was being hoisted up into the air and the crowd was going positively _wild_ in the stands. Cheap speakers crackled and Ikem’s taut voice carried over the manic audience. “The first round goes to the Swamp Witch and-- the Jasmine Dragon!”

“ _Hah!_ ” Toph sneered, shaking her free fist at the booing nonbelievers in the crowd as Zuko led her away from the ring, back into the interim wing. “Pushing eighty- _something_ and I can _still_ kick all your butts!” 

“Toph,” Zuko cautioned, grunting as he leaned back into the stand as the next two teams took their places in the ring. “Stop that. They don’t know you’re the Blind Bandit.”

“And they don’t know _you’re_ the old Fire Lord.”

Zuko shrugged blandly, but Toph could tell he was absolutely thrilled with the turnout of their rumble with the earthbenders. His heart was thrumming happily, his hands wringing around one another, as if trying to stave off excited nerves. Yeah, they didn’t need to accidentally have sparks bursting up from his fingertips because he was getting his first night of enrichment since Guanyin knows when. “Having fun yet, you nay-sayer?”

Zuko huffed quietly. “I don’t want to give you that satisfaction.”

“You can’t give me what I’ve already got,” she smirked, punching him solidly in the shoulder. “Your body language’s practically screaming at me, _this is the most fun I’ve had this whole past decade_.”

Zuko’s fingers flexed into his palms. When he spoke, he sounded thoughtful. “Fun is never something we think to consider in the Fire Nation. There are larger things to worry about.”

“ _Geez,_ you sound just like you did when we were kids,” Toph grouched good-naturedly. “ I have a very _distinct_ memory of you calling our fun on that beach stupid, you know. And detailed memories are pretty hard to come by these suns.”

“Because Sozin’s Comet was days away,” Zuko replied tersely. “ _Fun_ wasn’t something I thought I was supposed to be having back then. And then I just became too busy for it when I became the Fire Lord,” he shrugged, looking at his palms. “I was never bothered by it.” 

His heartbeat told another story. Toph only leaned back, cushioning the back of her head in her palms as she listened to the rumble rage on below them in the ring. She let a thoughtful glower take her face. Well, that just wouldn’t do.

_Maybe this old man needs this field trip as much as I do._

Ikem raised his voice again, announcing the winning team from the ring-- some randoms who went by the Sparrowkeet and the Raven-Eagle. 

“Doesn’t the raven-eagle technically prey on sparrowkeets?” Zuko mumbled curiously in her ear. “They’re birds of prey.”

“Don’t think about it too hard; they obviously didn't. You’ll burst a vessel.”

* * *

The rest of the night went on in a deluge of rocks crumbling, dust clouds billowing, and the crowd jeering. The stands, sounding full before, had to be teeming with overpopulation by now - if the obnoxious sweat-scent and the fact that, even down in the wings, Zuko felt like he were packed into a can of minnow-sardines. 

They had been put back into the ring by that odd Ikem personality multiple times, defeating the other earthbending teams in a rhythm that almost became comforting once Zuko had adapted to Toph’s method. 

Distract, stun, and brace. While Toph rushed her chosen contender Zuko was responsible for holding out until she was able to discreetly earthbend and throw Zuko’s opponent from the ring. To everyone but them, it was Zuko who appeared to be bending the earth to his bidding - and for a few instances, Toph was so in-tune with Zuko’s movements that he had to balk and remind himself that he was, in fact, _not_ the earthbender among them. 

And as the bell tolled as they sent the Kangarabbit and the Bushman (the names seemed to get progressively worse) to wallow in the elimination alcove, Zuko was surprised at the twinge of glee burning in his chest. Besting them had earned them a spot in the final rounds, pitting them against the victors of the past week’s Rumbles. 

“We’re _unstoppable_!” Toph shouted, latched onto his elbow as they returned to their place in the wing. “I haven’t felt this _alive_ since I kicked that nosy swampbender halfway to the banyan-grove tree!”

Zuko chuckled. “Do you make it a habit to bully your neighbors?”

“I’d say they deserve it. They know to stay out of _my_ part of the swamp but do they listen? _No._ So I’ll swat at those country blabbermouths until they do.”

They had been moved up to the very front, but that it mattered because the entire wing was empty. Every other contestant, individual and team, had been disqualified in a loss - except for the reigning champions of the past week’s worth of Rumbles. Toph and Zuko tossed remarks back-and-forth to one another on their bench as the arena below was cleared and prepared for the final team round - the same that would pit them against the assumedly reputable champions of the ring. 

Zuko wanted to sell himself lightly, but the adrenaline of he and Toph dominating behind that chain fence was so liberating that he couldn’t hold back his smirk at the thought of conquering these so-called _champions_ . They might be _good_ , but they could _not_ be Lord Zuko and Toph Beifong. 

“And now,” Ikem crowed over that cursed broken loudspeaker, “the moment you have all been waiting for! _Swamp Witch, Jasmine Dragon,_ take your places on the ring for the _final_ Earth Rumble match tonight!”

“With _pleasure_ ,” Toph grinned, striding past Zuko with the confidence of someone who’d already won the night. He had no reason to believe they weren’t going to. 

“These two have bested _every single_ opponent that’s come across their path tonight in the ring; a surprise that I can safely say _none_ of us were expecting-- oh, don’t look at me like _that, Jasmine Dragon,_ we were all thinking it. Dig out your wallets and coin purses, my friends, and prepare to place your bets for the championship finals!” 

An appreciative ripple of sound roared up from the audience. They were hungry for content that he and Toph were all too willing to give now. They'd come this far; why not give them the finality of one last victory? 

“And joining them to fight for their throne, you _know_ them, you _love_ them, you love _watching_ them crush their opponents into dust-- the Earth Rumble gives you the _Leopard-Shark_ and his partner, the _Badgermole!_ ”

“The _Badgermole?_ ” Toph whispered incredulously next to him. “He’s insulting to the greatest animal in the _world._ ” 

“Rumors say that the Leopard-Shark is _half-Southern Water Tribe_ ,” Ikem’s voice conspiratorially buzzed, “hunting the furs he wears himself as he tries to discover himself while sailing the coldest ocean in the world. Is that a _new_ piece of leopard-shark armor?” 

“Torn right off the back of the biggest shark you’ve ever seen, _friend,_ ” the Leopard-Shark growled, theatrically flexing for the zealous audience with a winner’s smirk. He leveled Zuko with a pointed look, a silent challenge before he spoke. “I’m sure I can take down an old, crusty _dragon_ without even breakin’ a _sweat.”_

Ikem cackled. “Are you gonna _take that,_ Jasmine Dragon?”

Irritated, Zuko curled in his arms, and Toph complemented it by making the ground beneath them quake with the _slightest_ shift of her toes. 

“ _That’s_ what we like to see! It’s what we _want_ to see! Next we have the _Badgermole,_ the Leopard-Shark’s sole confidante; legend tells that he practices his bending every _night_ with bandages around his eyes, trying to master Toph Beifong’s _blind_ method of earthbending - _while_ learning badgermole as a _second language_.”

Zuko had to withhold a bark of laughter while Toph practically snarled next to him. “Nevermind. That’s insulting to _me._ Personally. Zuko, he’s _mine_.”

“I’ve got no problem with that,” Zuko growled back. “Doesn’t this Leopard-Shark know that a _dragon_ is a whole different beast from a little _shark_?”

“You’d better give him a _real good_ reminder of that,” Toph grinned back, a mischievous glint in her gaze. Her grin was radiant, and he could tell by the stinging of his cheeks, he must have been grinning right alongside her.

“Brave fighters,” the speakers boomed, “it’s time to _rumble!_ ”

The bell opened the match and the ring immediately dissolved into dust and chaos.

Toph wasted no time in advancing on the Badgermole with a bloodthirsty snicker, circling around and then up behind him to shove a chunk of earth right up his pant leg. The portly man cried out in shock, shaking the clumps of rock from the hems of his ankles as Toph began to barrage him with large pebbles.

Zuko wasn’t given much time to marvel, though, because the Leopard-Shark was upon him in seconds. He parried the initial three fists aimed at his chest, knocking his opponent backward. He recovered quickly, however, and earth blazed to life beneath Zuko’s feet as if a gopher-weasel were burrowing just under the surface. 

Toph stopped it by dissolving the Leopard-Shark’s attack when Zuko braced into a low and wide stance, helping further the illusion that it was him moving the earth as opposed to the Swamp Witch giving the Badgermole a run for his money (and his pants, which were now dragging at his ankles). 

He spun on his heel, intending to plunge forward and unbalance the earthbender. As Zuko’s hand dove towards the Leopard-Shark’s abdomen, intent on striking him hard to send him reeling, the Leopard-Shark retaliated by swinging wild fists at Zuko’s cloaked face.

Zuko evaded the Leopard-Shark’s attack, crouching low before diving forward in a roll (and _ow,_ he was _not_ as agile as he used to be, but at least it worked) to sweep his opponent’s leg out from beneath him. The Leopard-Shark went down with a howl. _He’s unpracticed in hand-to-hand_ , he thought quickly, smirking to himself. _What would he ever do if he were chi-blocked?_

Zuko stepped back. Across from him, Toph was stepping in circles around the Badgermole, completely unbothered by his attempts to knock her off her moving pedestal.

The Leopard-Shark snarled, turning on Zuko. Rage and mortification shadowed his face like a dark mask; he was not enjoying being made a fool of at his own game, in _his_ ring. Zuko hardly had the time to register the telling twitch of the earthbender’s fingers before oversized wedges of earth cropped up on either side of him. In the same moment Toph brought up a platform for him to leap from, pulling him three feet into the air. He leapt forward, fist hitched to strike the Leopard-Shark from the air-- but he was jolted to a stop mid-air. Zuko collapsed forward onto his chest with a startled shout-- but when he tried to move to his feet, he noticed that one of them was trapped in the tented earth of his opponent.

“No fancy moves from you _now,_ Dragon!” The Leopard-Shark sneered, hovering over Zuko in a leering squat. “Now stand still-” Another tent of earth shoved themselves around Zuko’s shoulders, and he was helpless as a huge, sweaty hand reached out to his face. “I’d like to see your face when I knock you outta this ring!”

“No, _wait-_ -” Zuko’s eyes widened as he felt the cloth wound tight around his face sift, tearing away from his head, his face, his _scar_ until--

 _Rrriiippp_ -

The audience went still.

All action in the ring had stopped, too, like time had suddenly stilled-- which she quickly took advantage of, tossing boulders at both The Leopard-Shark and his weasel of a teammate to knock them into the back wall. The earth trapping Zuko fell back into the ring, sending him down with a breathless _oof_. 

Toph spared a moment to shift her ankle, likely trying to tell if he was all right before letting out a triumphant howl-- but it was met with no reception from the audience. She scowled and threw up her hands, exasperated. “Seriously! What’re you all so _quiet_ for? We _just won!”_

The crowd broke into shocked whispering.

“Is that-- the _Fire Nation guy_?”

Well. That felt insulting.

It was a boy’s voice, coming from some indeterminable point in the audience. But it was the catalyst for a spree of other shocked voices which quickly grew into a noisy conglomerate of confused astonishment.

 _“That’s the Fire Lord, isn’t it?_ __  
  
“No, look at how old he is--”

_“And he was earthbending!”_

_“But look at his scar! I saw that face all over Republic City when I was visiting my cousin! That’s him!_ ”

Zuko’s throat tightened with alarm as he got to his feet, hastily put his hands down on Toph’s shoulders, and dragged the cackling earthbender out of the ring. Did she think this was _funny_ ? ...Scratch that, she definitely thought this was absolutely _hilarious_. Without needing any kind of prompt she blew open the wall, closing it up behind them as they scrambled beneath the stands that shuddered and trembled beneath the weight of the baying members of the audience. 

This was _precisely_ why he hadn’t wanted a spotlight. Even if it _had_ been thrilling to be able to knock heads as he had in the so-called _good old days_ , he didn’t know if it would be worth the expense of being recognized in a foreign nation - let alone in a seedy underground fighting ring! What if Izumi heard about what he was up to? What kind of name it would give the royal Fire Nation family? Oh Agni--

Yet despite that cynical train of thought, the aches flaring up in his hip and the tense but excited throbbing of his joints after a night of exertion made his heart buzz with content. 

“This way!” Zuko reeled to a stop beside a ramshackle door, trying its handle first before throwing his weight into his shoulder and busting it open with a splintering _crack_. He and Toph flushed inside, and Toph readily kicked up a slab of earth to hold the door shut behind them, preventing any pursuers from an easy way in. 

“Good idea, getting us trapped in a _wooden_ sideroom,” Toph snorted, frowning down at the rotten wooden panels below them. “What now?”

Motes of dust, shook by the pounding of many feet, sputtered down above Zuko’s head and he brushed them away from his eyes with a scowl.

The room was dark around him, but just as he opened up his palm to spring a flame to light their surroundings, he noticed that he could make out most of the space. He spun around, trying to decipher the source of the light. The bulb in the middle of the room looked as if it had burned out years ago, swaying precariously from a thread-thin wire-- but then where was that light coming from?

“A window,” Zuko pointed out. High off the ground and rectangular, a dirty window looked in on the supply room, welcoming what moonlight the night had to spare. “We can sneak out through there.”

“Sneaking out through windows,” Toph snorted, already on her way to the wall where Zuko was trying to draw aside the shelving with little luck. “Makes me feel like we’re doing something _illegal_.”

Zuko stopped pushing aside wrinkled cardboard boxes and dust-covered canned goods that had probably been expired since the founding of Republic City. “Technically-- we _are_ doing something illegal.”

Toph flapped a hand dismissively at him. “ _I’m_ the law-woman around here. It’s not illegal unless I _say_ it is. Just give me a boost, will you?” 

Zuko lowered himself, minding the unpleasant ache cropping up in his lower back as Toph stepped into his cupped palms and pushed herself up towards the window-- feeling around until she found its latch and pushed it open. Cool air rushed in to greet them, beckoning them outside. Zuko followed quickly after her, teeth gritted with frustration by the time he was on his stomach, crawling over the window’s ledge. Luckily, it was at ground-level. “That used to be much easier to do,” he grumbled into the ground, letting himself lay there for a second.

“You mean when you were younger, spryer, shorter, and faster?” Toph barked from above him. “Join the club.”

By the time they had escaped from the unkempt field surrounding the warehouse, hiding in a tiny yard up the hill, people had begun to spill out of the building. 

And that’s when Toph punched him in the shoulder.

_“Hey!”_

“What was _that!_ ” Toph spat at him. “I’ve seen better fighting from a baby turtleduck! We would’ve won that thing!”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Zuko scowled back, fists balled on his waist. “I can’t stop rock with my hands, I would break every finger I’ve got.”

“How do you know that?”

“How do I-- Toph, it’s _rock!_ Versus _flesh_ and _bone!”_

“What about all that notoriety in _unarmed combat_ you’ve always had up your sleeve? Huh?”

“Wh-- I’ve haven’t had to use my melee training in _years,_ ” Zuko pointed out. He'd only used firebending when he'd tried to apprehend Zaheer in the North Pole three years ago; he hadn't really had any _physical fights_ since. “I--”

Toph flicked her finger and a clump of mud flew from the earth and splattered across Zuko’s forehead. He was silent a moment, stunned.

Toph crossed her arms over her chest. “There. Now we’re even.”

Zuko swatted mud from between his eyes with a weary grunt. “Very mature of you.”

His partner simply shrugged. “There wasn’t anything _mature_ about bickering like _children._ ”

 _"You started it,"_ Zuko huffed and glanced back in the direction from whence they’d come. People had already begun to filter back into the warehouse, flipping off their torches with resigned faces. Some of the more wayward of them were breaching the tall grass and headed back towards the city, and he figured those were the individuals he’d want to guard his pockets-- or his _neck_ \-- around. They didn’t look particularly friendly, coming up the hill.

“But I suppose not,” he remarked, then broke into a smile that might've been amused if he didn't think they were about to get wrung around the throat by some angry earthbenders. “I’m only sorry you weren’t able to see the Leopard-Shark’s face when he unmasked me. I thought he might have fainted from shock if you hadn’t bouldered him into the wall.”

“Oh, I could feel his surprise plenty enough,” snickered Toph. “People’s hearts do this stuttering _thing_. Felt like someone had told him he’d just kicked in the face of his own mother.”

“No, it was just a Fire Lord. That’s plenty surprising. We ought to get moving; there’s some rather ill-spirited men making their way towards this yard.”

“ _Fine._ But you know what else is surprising?”

“Hmm?" Zuko turned.

He was met with another splash of mud to the face. 

* * *

Late that night when they flew away from Gaoling on Druk to find some inconspicuous lodging in one of its flanking towns, they were all but oblivious to the austere eyes watching them from the confines of a shadowed alley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was surprisingly hard to write! Sure, it's only been like, three days since the last chapter went up but I can be so much faster if I really wanted to be. I’m not even that happy with its turnout but it’s Here and I’ll die without a beta read like a man. I'm shoving my life into a mover's unit to move across the country right now-- getting to sit down and write this is a real respite. It's like, 110+ degrees all the time here and I kinda wanna die.
> 
> The thought of Toph forcing Zuko into an Earth Rumble was way too funny to pass up when I was planning this thing-- making him look like an earthbender to trick their opponents by just doubling her own workload was worth it to her.
> 
> Next chapter will have some nice moments, and then some not-so-nice moments-- and, of course, more Druk. We can't forget him. He was neglected this chapter and I simply will NOT stand for that.


	4. The Inn

Flying through the Si Wong Desert was as delightful as it always was.

Which meant it wasn’t delightful at all. Even so far up from the rolling, overheated dunes of sand that laid waste to the southern-central Earth Kingdom, Toph could still granules of the stuff floating in the air around them, carried by wind as warm as dragon’s breath.

She could vouch for that metaphor now. When they’d readied Druk to take off that morning from the outskirts of Gaoling, the dragon had decided it was the perfect time to investigate every article of clothing Toph had on, up close and personal. And his breath ran _hot_ (and rancid, and she told the dragon as much). Zuko had huffed at the comment, but she could hear the smile in his voice when he beckoned her up. She’d kicked him _accidentally_ in the shin when she’d saddled up at the withers, just to be in good practice.

Shockingly it had been _Zuko_ who had suggested their next destination: Ba Sing Se. 

Initially, Toph was hesitant. Not because she was apprehensive or nervous about the city-- spirits, no, that place was just absolutely _teeming over_ with people. It didn’t take a guru to piece together that the place has probably only gotten even more _pretentious_ since the last time she’d been there; which was a _long_ time ago. What was it, some police conference she’d gone to with Aang? A peace convention? Frost, _whatever_ it was, it was too long ago to be worth remembering.

So Toph clipped back that all that discretion Zuko was holding so near and dear to his heart would be tossed out the nearest window if they went to Ba Sing Se. There wouldn’t be a soul there today who wouldn’t recognize one or more likely both of them the minute Druk flew over the walls. Zuko had made some half-witted comment about being able to merge in among them for months without being outed as the exiled Fire Nation prince, and by that logic, they’d be able to do it again. 

“This whole thing’s gonna be us playing incognito, isn’t it?” Toph had tutted, rubbing the crust from the corners of her eyes and willing her sore back to cooperate as she tried to sit up. That Earth Rumble had taken more out of her than she wanted to admit, even to herself.

Zuko had paused where he was shuffling slowly across their room, giving a pensive little hum. “It doesn’t have to be. There’s a place in Ba Sing Se I would like to visit. It’s rural, in the outskirts on the fields and farmland.” 

Toph wrinkled her nose. “The Outer Ring? It always smells like someone’s left an elephant-koi out to rot.” 

“Not there, exactly,” Zuko mused, sitting down on the edge of Toph’s bedroll. “It was a spot- a hill my Uncle would go to.”

All resignations Toph might have had about waltzing into Ba Sing Se were swept under the rug. To Ba Sing Se it was, then. Shoot. She couldn’t even say she was indifferent about it; she missed the sage old man-- so much it even surprised her sometimes. Her heart thrummed like it anticipated sitting on a hill where Uncle Iroh liked to sit was somehow more exciting than destroying an entire Earth Rumble. Maybe it was.

But she didn’t need to think about all _that_ knot of feelings right now, not while they were an entire _continent_ away from the capital.

She’d begun to recognize a pattern in Druk’s flying. Whenever they were lower to the ground (Zuko would tell her, plus she could feel the descent in the pit of her stomach), he slinked like a lizard-snake, shimmying as he slowed and prepared to drop. When they were higher up, though, she had to grip tighter at Druk’s hair or even onto Zuko (what? she was _truly_ blind up here) because Druk’s flying was fast and full of movement, like he was playing this game of _how many clouds can I wobble between and nearly unseat both my passengers?_

Whenever Appa flew, it was always so mild and level-- aside from when, y’know, they were getting bombarded by their enemies. His ascents and descents were usually pretty similar, but even then, it had taken Toph _weeks_ to find balance on that big bison saddle. Which led to a _lot_ of Sokka-arm-clinging.

And now, it was _Zuko_ -arm-clinging. Luckily, his arms always seemed to be within grabbing distance whenever Druk bowed too steeply or swerved too abruptly. That was one upside to not having some broad saddle to clutch when things got hairy.

She was willing herself not to be lulled into fatigue by the oppressive sun, steeping water from Zuko’s canteen (which tasted like it _usually_ held tea; honestly, it probably did), when she heard Zuko’s concerned hiss behind her. “What? What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” Zuko parried, but Toph wasn’t convinced. She lurched back up from where she was hunched over Druk’s head, frowning acutely into oblivion. “Nice try, Sparky. What’s down there?”

“Nothing that can reach us, thankfully,” he corrected cautiously. “I’ve spotted a few sand-shark fins following us. Druk’s noticed them, too.”

Toph huffed. Zuko was worried over some mediocre little sand-fish a hundred feet below them? She’d had to tell off a platypus-bear off right from the safety of her own cave. “So what? They’re not gonna nip your toes off all the way up there, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Zuko hummed, not sounding too pacified by Toph’s remark. “No, it’s not them I worry about. It’s their mother.”

Oh. _Well._ That was a bit of a different story.

Toph had never encountered a fully-grown sand-shark herself, and she counted herself lucky for it. And there weren’t many creatures out there that she didn’t think she _couldn’t_ handle. But, seriously, an enormous creature that supposedly swims beneath the scorching sands of the Si Wong, outsizing any normal blimp and leaving pilots and crewmen alike terrified of the desert?

Yeah. You could say she wasn’t exactly _enthusiastic_ to meet such a thing face to face. It was some miracle she, Sokka, and Katara didn’t find one that one time--or that one didn’t find _them_. That whole experience in the Si Wong was already unpleasant enough as it was.

Druk swiftly began to wing deeper into the sky, pulling them up higher just as Zuko gave a wary whistle through gritted teeth. “Good call, Druk.”

“I take it the mother’s come up to play?”

“I don’t think she wants to _play_.” 

It _really_ frustrated her that she could hear the genuine confusion in his voice.

“Spirits, just _drive_ the _dragon_.”

* * *

It was just after sunfall that they descended into a remote Si Wong town settled around a lush-looking watering hole. Zuko’s heart ached slightly to see the lingering effects of the Earth Empire’s takeover still being deconstructed. They had passed over an abandoned Empire lookout tower on the descent in and he thought he had made out a pile of tattered Empire insignia banners tossed in a broken wagon just outside the settlement. 

At least these people weren’t being held under the Empire’s metal fist any longer. Metalbending hadn’t been created by the proud woman in front of him for such tyranny. Zuko was sure that Toph was annoyed (and that was putting it as lightly as he could think to) with how Kuvira and her people used it to frighten and then secure whole states for themselves.

“Who’s a good dragon,” Zuko stroked Druk’s ribbed snout once they’d landed in… a makeshift stable, which was really a farmyard that looked as if it hadn’t been used for a few years. It was always a gamble to leave Druk around ostrich-horses or any other type of livestock. Apparently other creatures didn’t like it-- and neither did their owners or riders-- whenever he left Druk right next to them. “It’s you. _You’re_ a good dragon.”

“Maybe you should get a room for the two of _you_ and let me be for a night,” Toph laughed behind him, but she’d come up and hooked her palm beneath the curve of Druk’s fuzzy cheek. Druk immediately tilted away from Zuko’s hand, leaning into Toph’s touch like his very life depended on it. He was _purring_ , for Agni’s sake-- so loudly and so fiercesomely that he could feel the air around them trembling. Toph’s effect on Druk was, one, wildly humorous, and two, threatening. Threatening in an odd _why does my dragon like_ you _so much more than me?_ sort of way. 

“He’s like an overgrown cat,” Toph simpered, seeming to sense the disbelieving daggers Zuko was staring down at her. “The weird, hasty ones you find all over Republic City. Su tried to convince me to take in some mangy stray when she was just a kid.”

“You’re comparing my dragon, one of the eldest masters of firebending, to the domestic house cat.”

“And I’ll compare _you_ to one too,” Toph smirked. “You’re aloof enough to play the part.” The earth beneath them shook as Druk flopped gracelessly onto his flank. His tail was thrashing wildly behind him, thudding happy _thumps_ across the brittle cotton-grass around them-- and this dragon had the audacity to look crestfallen when Toph retracted her hand, flexing her fingers like they’d gotten tired from all the needy dragon-scritches. 

When it was clear that Toph was through giving him all the _scritches,_ Druk’s upside-down head turned towards Zuko. A lowing warble from the dragon beseeched him, and Zuko just had to laugh at the sight of his wallowing mount. “You’re going to spoil him, Toph.”

“Like you don’t?” 

“I _try_ not to. Often when he gets this way I wake up and he’s trying to sneak into my room and sit on my bed. He’s broken multiple bedframes. And window frames. And doors-”

“You’re only proving my point here about the cat-and-dragon parallels. Has anyone ever tried crossing them? You’d end up with the exact same animal.”

Zuko muttered something foul and cheeky under his breath, promising Druk that they would return come morning with a basket of something bloody and spicy. 

He wished they could have landed sooner, but unlike the rigorous days of their youth, lying on a stale bedroll just didn’t do it for Zuko anymore. Toph never made any crass comments about the need to find a place with actual beds and other commodities, either; he didn’t know what kind of accommodations her… _swamp cave_ had, but it was clear her back appreciated something soft to lay on as much as his did after a day of flying.

 _Especially_ this particular night, when he suspected they were both more than just a tad bit sore from last night’s adventure in the undergrounds of Gaoling. His hip was doing him _zero_ favors right now, and probably wouldn’t be in his corner for a few long days, now that he thought about it.

Yet he didn’t regret taking on the Earth Rumble with Toph for one second, no matter how badly his bones complained. Even now, when they were miles and miles away from Gaoling, his hands still tingled with adrenaline and he found himself rewinding and replaying last night’s events in his mind-- even the dizzying blur that was getting outed as Fire Nation royalty. It had been playful and exhilarating in ways that he hadn’t felt in years.

Uncle had said once that an ache in your bones and a light in your heart was the most satisfaction one could harvest from life. He remembered it specifically after Uncle had returned to the Palace after a night out at the Twin Sun Festival, claiming that while his old body ached, his soul blazed with happiness to have had the night’s experiences.

Maybe _this_ was that sensation Uncle had been talking about. 

Many of the shoppes and eatery outlets had already closed for the evening, shuttering their windows and locking their doors, until they came across a congee shoppe whose lights beckoned them inside. 

“There’s boxes with Empire labelling in the corner,” Zuko murmured uneasily, picking at the roast duck sitting at the top of his rice dish. He’d very discreetly tapped a few spritzes of fire-pepper salt on top when their server’s head was turned behind the front counter. “But I think they’re only being recycled to carry goods in.”

“They’d better be,” Toph mumbled inelegantly around a mouthful of mushroom ramen. “I’m honestly sick of seeing the remnants everywhere, and I can’t even see.”

Zuko lowered down his chopsticks, fingers combing thoughtfully together. “I heard from Lin that you were there when they took Zaofu. I’m sorry.”

Toph shrugged. “What’s there to be sorry for? Zaofu was liberated right along with the rest of the Earth Kingdom.”

Zuko withheld his bemusement. Toph was proud as ever, even when her daughter’s state had been usurped by the world’s latest domineering act. “Were you there when they took on Republic City?” 

“I might as well have been,” Toph mused, picking her way around the noodles in her bowl to pull out a sliver of mushroom. “I could feel the city shaking all the way across the continent! The vines weren’t too pleased with what was going on, either. They’re _still_ testy.”

“The vines?” echoed Zuko, the notch between his eyes beginning to ache with bewilderment.

“ _Eh,_ I’ll explain it later,” Toph grunted, flapping a clump of dripping ramen dismissively at Zuko. “Spirit vines, energies, keeping track of the world.”

“Wh-- nevermind.” Zuko chewed his congee with resignation. Agni, it was near impossible to get anything out of this woman; stubborn as a mountain, she was. And he had to respect her deeply for it. “I heard of what happened the morning after. There was no one in the city to wire the Fire Nation as it was happening-- understandably. And the new spirit portal…”

“I _knew_ something with the spirits came to a head!” Toph crowed, face lit up with satisfaction. “I _felt_ it. I knew it couldn’t have been that big spirit weapon they were flaunting. It was too strong-- too natural.”

“Tenzin explained that it was the cannon that tore open the portal in the first place,” Zuko admitted, relaying the information as it had been told unto him. “Raiko tried to police it. I can’t say I’m unhappy that Zhu Li Moon replaced him as the President of Republic City.”

Toph smiled wryly. “She’s a good one, that girl. Smart. It’s what that city will need to balance itself out with all those spirits flooding in.”

Balance. It always seemed to circle back to that. Just as Aang had worked tirelessly in his lifetime to restore balance to a world reaped and burned by the Hundred Years War, Avatar Korra had worked just as passionately to protect that balance.

They finished up quickly enough, and Zuko courteously thanked the staff before they retreated to the token inn of the town. To Zuko’s silent chagrin and Toph’s wry amusement, there was only one room left vacant: with one bed. Not even Zuko’s cunning flash of his deep pockets could score them a double room; so they accepted their fates solemnly and seriously.

“At least it’s big,” Zuko drily stated when they pushed open the door, taking stock of the wide bed that even four full-grown adults would be comfortable sharing elbow-to-elbow. Toph only marched right past him, dropping down on her side with the cheekiest of grins, and patted the mattress beside her like she was beckoning a shy pet. “C’mere. _C’mere, Sparky._ ”

“I’m not a cat.”

“Then why are you getting closer?”

Zuko stopped at the foot of the bed, frowning at his traitorous feet. He hitched his arms over his chest. “I’m not.”

 _“Anymore,”_ smugly smiled Toph. Resigned to his unfortunate fate, Zuko settled on the opposite side of the mattress with a small-voiced groan as his hip made it a point to give him grief. “That sounded like a good one, huh.”

“Gaoling did me no favors,” Zuko drily responded. Toph only sucked her teeth in what was probably an empathetic fashion. “You and me both, Sparky. How long ‘til we get to Ba Sing Se?”

“Nearly there already. Druk will be able to make it to the Outer Ring by.. afternoon tomorrow, I’d think. If he feels like cooperating.”

“He’s been nothing but cooperative this whole time. Stop razzing the dragon, Zuko. Or I’ll take him for myself.”

“You can’t see all the _birds_ he’s gone off-track to chase,” Zuko grumbled. “And you’ll do no such thing. He wouldn’t like your swamp.”

“Druk say that himself or are you speaking for him?”

“I’m allowed to make assumptions for Druk because I’ve known him for longer than you have.”

“And does he _purr_ for you like he does for _me?”_ Toph’s light tone knew she was winning, which meant it was an appropriate time to toss his pillow at her- which she, of course, caught one-handedly. Damn her intrinsic ability to sense the vibrations of the world around her and react accordingly. “Someone’s testy.”

“It shouldn’t be surprising,” Zuko muttered, and Toph looked considerate a moment before huffing with laughter. “Got me there.”

His eyes found the radio resting on the simple dresser sitting at the front of the room and his stomach flipped. _I’m sure Izumi’s heard by now,_ he mused. _That her father was beating up earthbenders with one Master Beifong._ But what else could Izumi have expected to happen? What could _Zuko_ even expect, accepting a trip more outlandish and impromptu than half the things he did in his childhood-- from Toph Beifong?

Still. He was glad he had accepted. Even if his daughter had twisted his wrist until he gave in.

“Thinkin’ about your daughter?”

Zuko nearly startled right out of his robe at Toph’s probe. “How did you know?”

She grinned. “I didn’t, until just now.”

_“Ha-ha.”_

“Don’t sound so flustered. I’m thinking about mine, too.”

 _That_ caught Zuko moderately off-guard. He glanced over at her. Toph’s features were twisted into a thoughtful frown. “Do you remember when we let all the kids run off to Air Temple Island for a week?”

Zuko chuckled. “I remember. Izumi came home with half of her hair lopped off. I’m still not sure who’s responsible for that.”

“And my Suyin came home swearing like a teenager. What was she, seven? Eight? ..Not that she didn’t hear all that at _home_ from me, but if _anyone_ was gonna teach my girls to cuss, I wanted it to be _me_.”

“I’m very sure that Izumi learned her first swear from Bumi.”

“Oh, it was _definitely_ Bumi.”

They both shared a sardonic chuckle, resting for a heartbeat in the comfortable silence between them before Toph snorted, like she’d just recalled something funny. “Did you know Lin complained the whole day to me about wanting to go with your girl back to the Fire Nation after that thing?”

Zuko blinked. “She would have been welcome to come over.”

She leveled Zuko with a pointedly flat look. “You’d have lost ten years off your life with those two together.”

“I don’t think you’re giving me enough credit.”

“ _Ohoh_ , I’m telling you as Lin’s _mother_. Who also has a sister, let me remind you. You’d keel over, wise guy.”

“I could have handled more than one teenage girl.”

“You want to bet coins on that?” 

Zuko pursed his lips stubbornly but held his tongue. He had loved raising Izumi, teenage years and all. She couldn’t possibly have been as bad as he had been at her age. Right?

Yes. Izumi had never stolen away to wreak vigilante justice across the Fire Nation at night under a theatre mask. Or turned against him, allying with the nation’s sworn nemesis. 

Unless you counted that one time when she was seven when she and four of her giggling schoolmates had snuck into his chambers and doused him in snow. He wasn’t even sure how she’d _gotten_ snow. Or had it been when she had Kya over? He’d been too afraid to ask at the time. Frankly, he was too afraid to even try to ask Izumi now, if she’d even remember carrying out such a misadventure. Kya might.

“..I _do_ wish she could have grown up with your children more,” Zuko revealed suddenly, sighing through his nose as he drew himself up so that his back rested against the headboard. “She was never lonely." He hoped. "But she did miss them all terribly whenever she was kept home for too long; she would drop so many hints, between her lessons and training and our lunches at the pond.” He shook his head affectionately. “As blunt a child she could be, she always tiptoed around asking to go to Republic City to be with them.”

Zuko looked down at his hands, wrung lightly together in front of him. “I missed you all too.”

He had never had nearly as much time with his friends as they had with one another. While they founded Republic City and their relationships with one another grew, he had always felt like an outsider looking in on their affairs. This wasn’t to say that he felt alienated, no; he and Aang had been very, very close, and it still hurt sometimes to register that his old friend was gone, and had been gone for nearly two decades now. 

Yet he had always been a nation away, redeeming his home from the moral stain the war had left scorched across it - physically _and_ psychologically. If he ever got the impossible chance, he wouldn’t change a thing; the Fire Nation was a revered and fair country now. Izumi made certain of that. They were a major contributor to the rest of the world in terms of materials, aid, and defense; no longer did the mention of a firebender in people’s midsts send them into anxious mutters, as they might have some seventy, sixty years ago. 

...But because of that, Zuko had _missed out_ on a lot of things. And this intimate moment between parents, heaped haphazardly together in the dingy confines of a remote desert inn, felt like one of them. He found himself missing something that had never been there to begin with, and it ached something sore and new in his chest. 

If Toph took note of his subtle shift in disposition, she didn’t think to comment on it. She only hooked an ankle over her knee with a grunt, shifting slightly on the bed beside him. He was silently grateful for the rare gesture of emotional tact. 

“I made up with my girls, y’know. If that wasn’t obvious from the whole Empire thing.”

Zuko glanced up. From what he’d heard from Toph in terms of her relationship with her daughters, the lines between them had been so taut and tense he feared even asking her about them would snap the thread. Of course, that had been… some many years ago. His perspective on Toph and her family life were a bit dated, apart from her rescuing them from Kuvira. He thought he had heard of Toph making amends with Suyin some time ago, but had never had the means of finding a way to ask Toph if it were true. By then, his old friend seemed to have vanished into thin air, unreachable and unfindable-- in Foggy Swamp, he guessed.

Toph continued, taking Zuko’s pensive silence as an invitation to go ahead. “ _Lin_ took a lot longer to come around. Twenty-something years, give or take.”

 _“Spirits,_ Toph.”

“Don’t sound so shocked, Sparky. She’s got _my_ stubbornness and her father’s aloofness, _unfortunately_. But she got over herself and even patched things up with Su just this past year.”

Zuko smiled to himself, but the gesture weakened when a memory came rushing to the front of his mind.

Izumi had come into his bedchambers, asking in the middle of the night if she could go to Air Temple Island. When he’d asked why, she’d made a mumbling pass for an explanation about Lin and Kya, and just wanting to be there with them. 

Initially concerned, he’d wired Aang only to find out that Lin had stormed onto the island with lacerations on her cheek, seeking Katara. Only Katara had been on the other side of the world with Appa helping eastern Earth Kingdom villages recover from a generous string of particularly bad influenza. 

He hadn’t probed. He hadn’t pried. He only let her take the first ship to Republic City the following morning. When she’d come home two weeks later, she only threw herself into his arms and quietly thanked him. 

It nearly made his throat clog to remember it. 

“I was beginning to think I wouldn’t see it before I kicked it,” Toph was saying, but the bluntness of her tone contradicted the gentleness in her face. “I’m glad. And when it was my turn, all I said was ‘ _so long as you don’t hate me, I think I can get by_.’ Basically something along those lines.”

“She’s never hated you,” Zuko firmly replied.

“Then she sure had a funny way of showing me how much she _didn’t_ hate me.” Toph said it sarcastically, and Zuko might have been projecting the woundedness of her tone, but it still hurt to hear it. He’d never understand the complexity that was Toph’s family; but knowing that there was now peace binding them all together at long last, was pacifying. He couldn’t imagine how relieved Toph felt.

“You wanna know _why_ it all went haywire, Sparky?”

“Oh?” Zuko turned his eyes to Toph, who was smiling without humor up into the pale popcorn-tile of the ceiling.

“Su was running around with some triad geek kids.”

“Agni.”

“Right?” Toph smirked. “You knew Su; rubble-rouser in house and home. Not to say that Lin was the idol of decent behavior either. Was only a few months after Lin graduated the academy that she caught her sister driving for these triad boys who’d just robbed a store front.”

Zuko registered the information, subdued to silence. No one had ever talked much about what had happened to Suyin when she abruptly vanished from Republic City as a teenager; Toph had bluntly told the rest of them that she was going to attend a new school down in Gaoling with her grandfather. And that had been the end of that, what with the walls Toph had tossed up around her in her prime. 

“I couldn’t have that, though. So I covered up the report.”

Zuko blanched. Not with horror, or disappointment- but with surprise for Toph. It was so difficult to envision her covering something up in _her_ police force: her pride and joy in Republic City, for all he was aware. “And this made things… _fall apart?”_

“I think things had been falling apart for a while before that.” Toph said it so succinctly, but so softly, that he thought he had misheard her a moment. “Lin blamed Su for me stepping down as chief the year after when I let Himi take over. Maybe for a while it _was_ because of Suyin. I didn’t like what I did. But it was the only option I _had_.

“I forgave Su years ago; after all, look what she _did_ with herself after Republic City. Founding Zaofu! I can’t _not_ be proud and even impressed-- _don’t tell her that_ \-- for her.”

Zuko digested all this with the subtlest of smiles. Was he the first one Toph had divulged all this to? “Did the others know?”

“No. I didn’t feel like listening to Aang and Katara _harp_ about what they’d do with their own kids.”

“What about Sokka? He loved your daughters.”

Toph’s hard visage twitched, like something was trying to pierce through her typical mulish scowl. But she held fast. Zuko tucked that thought away, intent to poke that saber-tooth moose lion another time. “No. He didn’t know.”

Toph sighed and moved her neck so that her head on top of her hands, staring up into the ceiling. “Being a single parent is hard.”

Zuko’s expression softened. He reached over, hand wrapping gently around Toph’s palm. “I know it is.”

Izumi’s mother had died shortly after their daughter’s birth. Not even Katara had been able to help heal the wounds of a difficult childbirth the day after, when she’d hurriedly arrived on bison-back from Republic City.

But too much blood had been lost; a fate not even the Fire Sages had foreseen for the Fire Lady.

Katara had stayed in the Fire Nation for three months with Zuko in the Palace, a silent figure of comfort during his most trying period of leadership. The assassins from the New Ozai society, the conflict between he and Aang when he’d first risen to power and had tried tearing Fire Nation colonists from their homes and families-- they had all paled in comparison to coming to terms with the Fire Lady’s death. 

Yet Izumi had risen from those ashes, a graceful phoenix of justice and sincerity. Katara had helped give Zuko the foundation he had needed to ground himself with to be the father that Izumi would so dearly need. He wasn’t sure if he would have _survived_ if she had left him in the Palace to go home to Air Temple Island after the fact.

But look how they had all turned out. Izumi, Tenzin, Kya, Bumi, Suyin and Lin - they had all grown into such formidable and respectable individuals. His daughter led the Fire Nation with the reverent strength the nation needed. Tenzin had helped curate the new Air Nation alongside Avatar Korra. Kya worked the waters of the world as gracefully and skillfully as her mother, a healer to help any who needed it. His grandson would sing General Bumi’s praises from his time in the United Forces. 

Even Suyin and Lin - the formerly estranged Beifong sisters had carved their names into the history books as the founder of Zaofu and one of the most legendary chiefs Republic City had ever seen, respectfully.

With conviction, Zuko tightened his grip on Toph’s hand. “Look how our children have grown; who they’ve become. What you said about Suyin, and Zaofu. They wouldn’t have become who they are today without us, and I believe they all understand and respect that. Even Lin.”

Toph was quiet a moment, before she benignly snickered and lightly punched the top of Zuko’s shoulder. “You’re beginning to sound a lot like your Uncle, you know that, Sparky?”

Zuko’s smile warmed. “So Izumi enjoys telling me.”

The conversation petered after a few minutes longer, the weight of their fatigue far outweighing their need to keep up the back-and-forth chatter. Zuko fell asleep first, halfway through recounting a tale from long ago where a fledgling Druk had managed to tear apart his entire wardrobe to make a nest of singed robes. 

It left Toph to stare at the back of her eyelids (not like she’d see much else if they were open, anyway), a brow furrowed with concentration as she reached out to the world around her. Someone in the room next to them was pacing. Outside, she thought it was a meadow vole scuttling from one patch of dry brush to the next, its weird little paws scuttling quick and nervous over the condensed sand. 

No matter what she did, though, her focus kept returning back to the sleeping old coot next to her. She regarded his breathing, his heartbeat-- low and paced and _pulsing_ like the fire he wielded. She had committed his heartbeat to memory a long time ago-- and it startled her to realize how different it was now, when an ocean didn’t dampen or borderline _sever_ her connection to him through the vines.

Had its beat always sounded so tired?

Stubbornly Toph forced that doleful thought from her mind, willing sleep to come over her so morning could come back and Zuko could be _awake_ and she could ruffle him about Druk some more.

Sleep did come, eventually. It came fitfully and hesitantly.

But it came too soon, for neither could hear the concerned lowing of one choice dragon once the night reached its deepest and deadest hour.

Voiceless under the guise of night, invisible like black-clad stage hands moving in the background of an actor's stage, a drove of soundless bandits trickled over adobe roofs, heading dutifully towards the quiet inn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha. Oops. Sorry. BUT HEY, at least this means stuff's gonna kick up REAL soon. And it's gonna kick up a LOT.
> 
> SO-- how many of y’all think Sokka is totally Suyin’s dad? I think he could be and because it makes my heart hurt so much thinking about it, it’s canon in my books.
> 
> Speaking of -- I really don’t know who Izumi’s canonical mother is so I was purposefully obscure, but I have this lingering headcanon that Zuko raised Izumi as a single father. There’s nothing in canon to disprove that sad little thought-- I think?
> 
> I was really excited to have something more sensitive this chapter. Sure, sensitive and Toph in the same sentence don’t really mix, but remember Toph’s original field trip? Where she practically poured her heart out to Zuko and he was like, “that’s nice, kiddo, but we got bigger fish to fry right now?” 
> 
> I think she just needs the right person to talk this stuff out with; someone who’s not gonna Sweetness the life out of her. We only ever saw old-Toph interact with people she hardly knew, aside from her own family. And Zuko, too; being Fire Lord doesn’t leave much room for interpersonal relations beyond family, unfortunately, if you excuse his closeness with Aang that founded Republic City. But I imagine you can’t demand a window simply for your friends on a noble’s itinerary (especially not when you’re put in power so young with advisors who are likely way, way older than you are) without some kind of political / governmental gambit, I’d think - and because of this Zuko feels like he’s missed this chance to be a parent WITH the Gaang.
> 
> Anyways, let me know what you all think; I’m loving all the feedback so far! Like, it makes my day when I open my inbox and read all the new comments and the kudos marks.


	5. The Pin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took longer than usual to get out-- moving is super hectic, who could'a known, fsdhks I also drew a silly sketch with Druk, Toph, and Zuko! Dragon-scritches = the Good scritches:
> 
> https://twitter.com/rileydontdoit/status/1287817597489238016?s=20

Something was wrong.

She could feel it on her skin like the pressure before a rainstorm as her eyes winced open, willing the rest of her body to wake with her mind. The room was quiet aside from the idling, wispy snoring of Zuko - but she knew better than to underestimate silence.

Silence meant a predator in the swamp; when the trees and all their chittering inhabitants went still, you’d be wise to be still, too, letting whatever was prowling its way through the grove pass you by.

But Toph was never the type to lie down and keep quiet when something threatening was drawing near. She’d rather toss a rock its way and send it yelping back into the brush.

“Get up,” grunted Toph as her back regrettably lifted from the bed so that she could set her feet on the floor. “Sparky, get up.”

“ _Mm._ ”

“Sparky.”

“I don’t have a meeting this morning, Izumi…”

Toph lurched over to smack Zuko’s collarbone so sharply that he flinched awake. “Sparky, _wake up,_ something’s up.”

And whatever this _something_ was was actually _many_ somethings. _People,_ maybe a dozen of them. The terracotta floor trembled with their miniature vibrations that grew stronger by the heartbeat, indicating that whoever they were, they headed their way. Forty-whatever years as Chief of Police gave her a shrewdness that told her when something was innocuous, and when something was a threat - just by reading their footfalls.

These people didn’t stomp around like they were just entering town in a traveler’s caravan. This was a pointedly delicate approach; not that of a fleet-footed airbender’s, but that of a weasel-fox encroaching on what it thought was the unsuspecting meadow vole.

Zuko, by now, was leaned up on his elbows, rumbling something incomprehensible. He sounded weary but attentive. “What is it?”

“More like _who,_ ” Toph answered. “They’re heading towards the inn; must have entered town just a few minutes ago.”

Zuko was clever enough to trust Toph’s instinct; the room warmed incrementally, and she heard the subdued crackling of a flame glowing in the palm of his hand. “Do they mean us harm?”

Judging from the pause in vibration that was almost dutifully synced, their visitors had pulled to a stop just outside of the inn’s perimeter. “Unless they’re here to surprise someone _else_ with a dozen people, most likely.”

The muffled ruffle of sheets being spread back over the bed caused Toph to scowl, incredulous, and she swung her head around to fix it towards Zuko. “Are you-- are you making the _bed?”_

“Trust me,” was his curt reply. “Come over to this side and crouch.”

She pieced together the plan Zuko was considering. They genuinely didn’t know if these people were here for them specifically, or if they meant to ambush and rob the entire inn. If they staked their raid on rooms that _looked_ occupied, they might very well pass her and Zuko.

Which felt uncannily like sheepishly hiding in the grass when a cat-gator stomped past. It felt like a coward's motif. She opened her mouth to say so but was stilled, focusing, when the footsteps began again. They whispered across the inn courtyard, passing the first block of rooms-- and left them behind without so much as pausing to glance into the windows.

“These aren’t some lowlifes here to snatch up purses,” she discerned, brow notching when the head of the group seemed to stop just shy of their window. “They’re heading right for us.”

“Shh,” Zuko urged. Toph stubbornly clamped shut her lips, frowning into the side of the bed. 

The door blew in the same moment the glass of the window shattered. Wood and glass splintered violently into the room, brittle bits of wood and glass embedding themselves into walls and carpet. Toph resisted the innate urge to rip up the entire floor from beneath the two men who had lunged into the room, but Zuko was holding fast beside her. He tapped her wrist knowingly and she understood.

“Yao San,” one of the men said tersely, his voice bright and nasally. His body was tense with surprise. “They aren’t here.”

“Impossible. They were not spotted leaving the premises.” A wolfish voice barked from behind them. “Search the room!”

Toph’s ear gave a mindful twitch. Someone had been watching them?

Her knuckles tensed into the flooring when one of the men began to check their opposite bedside, while the other - shorter, stouter - came to round the other bedside to check their side of the room where she and Zuko crouched in the bed’s shadow. 

Toph didn’t need any sort of warning to leap to her feet simultaneously with Zuko, fingers furled as she pulled the earth up from beneath the bed, flinging the frame on top of the man rooting through the bedside table. She felt heat crackle in her ear and she wisely ducked, foot sweeping out to shove a pillar of earth against the ribcage of someone trying to climb in through the window panel as a billow of flames lunged for the dolt who was a step away from discovering them there.

It was safe to say that the rest of them knew that they were in the room now. Good. Toph wanted to kick their behind for launching this thing at spirits-knew-when in the morning.

Their ambushers streamed through the broken door frame. Really, they made it too easy for her.

Toph clenched her fists, crumbling the floor into gravel and grit beneath their feet, disabling their strides. Zuko seized their surprise by punching flame at the door, sending a good half of their attackers scattering outside, patting down the flames jumping across their blazers.

“What are you _cowards_ standing around for?” That callous voice barked again, the authority sharpening it undoubtedly marking the head honcho of this operation. _Yao San,_ or whatever that guy had called him. Not that names were important; he was about to get a mouthful of dust in just a minute here. “Get them!”

Those left unsinged by Zuko’s first lob of flames advanced. Toph evaded a water-whip cast from the hands of a long-limbed woman, hastily drawing up two blocks of earth to tent her between them, disabling her waterbending by pinning her arms to her sides. Zuko was at her back, radiating heat and casting flames to ward away two more suspicious characters who were trying to snake their way between them. “Chi-blockers,” Zuko growled warily behind her, and she had to resist her own urge to spit her spite. Such a low blow, disabling somebody from bending. Literally.

She grumpily flicked the decently-sized hunk of clay that was once a flower pot on the desk right into one of the chi-blocker’s foreheads, effectively knocking him out as the woman with him reeled back with surprise. Zuko cut her off before she could even register what had happened, lunging forward to kick her into someone who had just stormed into the room, a dagger clenched in their fist. They collapsed on top of one another, a tangle of limbs and bruised ribs.

This room wasn’t meant to fit more than two people, let alone a _dozen._ All around them Toph could feel the inhabitants in neighboring rooms startling alike to the feeling of commotion-- they had to get out of this room before it collapsed on top of them. As much as these dolts deserved it, there were innocent civilians in the rooms around them who could be crushed if their room caved, too. They didn’t really deserve that. 

“I’m gonna tell you dunderheads what I tell my daughters!” Toph crowed into the fray of dust and flame and flying things that she thought were the feathers from their now-shredded pillows. “Take it _outside!_ ” She pointedly chucked chunks of terracotta into the abdomens of multiple people, forcing them stumbling backwards - and in one case, bumbling straight out of the window with a startled yelp. Zuko, punctual as ever, sent the rest scattering out of the devastated room with powerful belts of fire. “We need to lead them away from the inn!”

“On it!” Toph growled, bringing her palms side-by-side and angling them downward, tilting the earth just outside the front wall, sending the ones who didn’t get the hint to _back off_ stumbling onto their faces. She and Zuko were on them in an instant, barragging them with sharp pebbles and bullets of fire alike to fend them further backwards, into the open courtyard and away from the over-inquisitive residents who were trying to peek outside to see what was happening.

She’d had to toss a boulder at someone’s door just to slam it back shut when she heard a teenage boy griping about _I know how to bend now, I can fight! Mom, I’ve been practicing with the sand all week, it’ll be fine! Shut up, let me go outsid-- AHG-BIGROCK--_

Zuko grabbed Toph’s shoulder and pressed her into a crouch before his arms shot up and outward, expelling a brilliant ring of frustrated red flames that put distance between themselves and their attackers. Toph seconded with an assault of her own, tripping up multiple individuals who thought themselves clever for ducking below Zuko’s fire and trying to get a dive in on the duo. Didn’t they realize who exactly they were messing with? For _their_ sakes, she really hoped they didn’t. 

But for _her_ sake, she hoped they’d continue to underestimate these two elderly benders so she could earthbend them across the next mountain range. 

“What do these halfwits want?” Toph snarled to Zuko as she swiftly ripped rock up from the courtyard and shielded them from a cannonade of frozen icicles. That waterbending woman had gotten free somehow.

“I’m not eager to find out,” Zuko wryly said back. She could hear the tension in his voice. “Can you round them up?” 

Toph rolled her neck with a satisfying _crick._ “Thought you’d never ask,” she preened, twisting her foot to peel up earth that boxed in the stragglers on the left. Zuko left her side, fire sparking in his palms as he set the earth alight in a tight arc around those on the right, forcing them inward until the two groups were struggling in one big bundle of messily executed aggressors. 

Right on cue, a rumbling snarl that brought a lethal heat in its wake shocked the air, and Druk descended from the heavens, landing on the makeshift wall of rock Toph had unearthed. Based on the startled gasps and outcries from their attackers, Druk must have looked awfully fearsome, all snarling teeth and bristling hair. _Hah._

“That’s all of them,” Zuko determined, stepping in beside her. His shoulders were still bunched high around his neck, fists poised with readiness to counter any surprises. But Toph wasn’t anticipating anything from the sorry clump of people walled in between a rock and a growling dragon right now; it was the grating of wheels on earth that told her this wasn’t over. 

“It’s not,” Toph huffed, gesturing at the entrance to the courtyard where three jeeps - empty save for their drivers - tore into the clearing. Toph instinctively sank the sandy earth beneath one of them, burying its wheels. Before she could do much else, more satomobiles poured into the inn’s yard after them. “City guardsmen,” Zuko supplied hastily before Toph could overturn the new vehicles with well-timed shifts of earth, “chasing the first three.”

Druk bayed and Toph could feel the rock face he was perched on crumple beneath his weight. “It’s their ride,” she realized, scowling when the singular earthbender among their apprehended party promptly smashed a hole in her wall right as the jeeps slammed to a halt beside it.

“They’re getting away!” Zuko shouted, and Toph side-stepped low next to him as a powerful flame shot forward from his clenched fists, aiming for the jeeps that were beginning to tear in a circle, loaded with escapees. Druk, too, roared with indignation and sent a pillar of flame after the fleeing vehicles that were promptly seen out by the three guard vehicles who were absolutely no help whatsoever.

And then it was just then, left standing in a burning, uprooted courtyard with a deeply scowling earthbender, a retired Fire Lord, and a lowing dragon.

Zuko’s first instinct was to turn and assess the damage on the buildings around them, and therefore the people inside of them, before placing a warm hand on Toph’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she shrugged his hand off. “Some hitmen _those_ guys were. Couldn’t even get a _hit_ on us.” 

Zuko was quiet a moment, padding away to lower himself to the ground and she frowned his way. “What?”

“This pin was on the lapels of the bandits who attacked the farmer’s son outside Shoshun,” he explained as he set a smoldered scrap of tunic in Toph’s hand for her to explore. She traced the length of its seam, perking a brow when she felt a ceramic link fastened to the underside of the fabric. “So what? They stopped at the same accessory store?”

Zuko tapped the pin between her fingers, doubtful. “No; I’ve never seen this before-- the plant the pin is portraying.”

“Do you usually make it a habit to identify random plants on pins?” Toph mumbled sarcastically, tracing her finger along the rim of the ceramic, and scowled. It _felt_ metallic, and if she focused she could manage to bend it if she so chose. But that was just it: she had to _f_ _ocus_ to try to bend it-- and she was _Toph_ freaking _Beifong_ , creator of metalbending, _hello_. What kind of metal _was_ this to spite her like this? “It’s odd to bend," she frowned, trying to pull the metal between her fingertips - but it kept solid. How dare it.

“It’s not platinum?”

“No,” Toph huffed. “But something’s off about it. It’s stubborn.”

“That’s something you two have in common.”

A heavy step behind her told her that Druk had come up behind them. Cheekily, Toph raised the singed tunic up to the dragon’s nose. She felt his breath warm her fist. “Your dragon a tracker, Sparky?” 

“Not like a shirshu could.” He paused. “Should we get a shirshu?”

“We don’t need a shirshu.” Toph shook her head, tearing the odd pin from the underside of the tunic and clenched it in her palm. “We’ve got all the info we need right here. You said they all had this on them?”

“The ones that came close enough, yes.”

“It means something to them. Some triads back in Republic City would wear something that looks discreet to anyone else but is actually a tell to other members of the triad- like a wristband or wearing their collars a certain way. Worked, too, up until _we_ figured all their tells out.”

Zuko stepped towards her and she palmed it back into his hand for him to scrutinize. “You think they’re affiliated with the bandits from Shoshun?”

“I imagine so. It would explain why they singled us out.” His breath hitched for a second, astonished and ludicrous in the same sharp inhale. “For how long have they been following us? Since before Gaoling?”

“Goodie, they’re _obsessed_ with us,” Toph grunted drily. “They must know who we are, or they’re just really tough sports about being robbed of some radish crates.”

Zuko sounded wary. “The former is more likely.” His tone sharpened, cheeky for just a second. “Yet they still underestimated us.”

“Getting old will do that to you,” Toph smirked. “Though _now_ I can complain that my back is killing me. _Spirits_.”

Zuko huffed with laughter, resting a steady hand across Toph’s shoulders. “You and me both,” he muttered flatly. “My hip still hasn’t recovered from getting knocked over during the Earth Rumble.”

“That’s your own fault.”

“Then so is your back pain.”

Toph scoffed and knocked him in the side with her fist. “Y’know, if only you’d ripped the shirts off one of those radish bandits. We could’ve compared them to be sure.”

“I don’t try to make it a point to unclothe the people I’m fighting.”

“Why not? Mortification’s a huge morale killer.” Her eyebrows pinched suddenly as someone else ran into the wrecked courtyard, arms flailing and lips smacking helplessly with shock. Luckily for him, Toph recognized the voice of the innkeeper before she could toss a rock at his head. He was crying and gesturing emphatically all around him, at the line of flames that were still scorching the earth, at the upturned ground and, of course, the broken entrances into their abandoned room.

Right along with the innkeeper’s keening moan, the wall around the busted door frame collapsed inward, followed shortly by the hole where the window pane once was. She imagined that the innkeeper was currently gawking at the mayhem that was the inside of the room now, with the overturned bed and the shredded pillows and broken lampshades and nightstands.

“You’ve still got your purse on you, right, Sparky,” she mumbled at Zuko, who was already breaking away towards the aghast innkeeper, full of fitful, flustered apologies. Toph snorted air from her nose and crossed her arms, beginning to flatten out the courtyard as Druk, taking the hint, began to deflate the flames still stubbornly pulsing with life around them.

Aang always had this thing about him: _I’m the Avatar, sorry that I wrecked your roof and half of your apartment, but I was busy chasing down some bad guy! Now he’s in jail and everything’s back to normal! Okay, thanks, bye!_ He’d never had to pay for the collateral of those actions with what she began to call the Avatar’s insurance. It had been her department that had cleaned up his messes, and she was sure that Lin was still chipping in to pay for Korra’s messes in Republic City now too. _Heh._ Talk about generational parallels.

But Avatar’s insurance wouldn’t save them here. Zuko’s bitter grumbling as he forked over what had to be a _steep_ donation to the inn was telling enough about that. 

She really missed the days where she could toss a rock at someone and didn’t have to worry about paying for the wall she ruined in the process. 

* * *

With the only room left vacant completely demolished ( _apparently_ when Toph had flung the bed she had accidentally broken the frame in half and torn the mattress into down, which made the innkeeper even _more_ incredulous), Zuko’s hand was forced to take off with Druk some time before sunrise. Toph had griped about the innkeeper actually owing them for likely saving the entire inn from being raided by those bandits, but the man was still so distraught over seeing the damages to his facility that he didn’t want to hear or consider it.

The misty fingers of dawn eventually stretched across the heavens, coaxing an orange sun up from the horizon. Druk’s wingbeats were relaxed and paced, but Zuko could feel the ascending sun invigorating the dragon as much as it did him. He hadn’t slept since being roused by Toph in the middle of the night; not that he thought he could, given the opportunity. His head was racing with thoughts regarding the mysterious bandits. But the sun eased the heaviness of his eyes and gave him the strength to straighten up on Druk’s withers. 

Toph, curse her, had passed out no more than five minutes after they’d been forced to leave the town. Even with the morning coming, Zuko had no heart to wake her. His arms were looped tightly underneath hers, keeping her steady as she inelegantly snored. His features softened, though, when his eyes darted down to his left wrist that Toph’s hand was clasped around. Her knuckles were pale, fingers wrapped tight across his skin.

He hadn’t said anything when she’d latched onto it after Druk had lifted. He certainly wasn’t going to now. 

Funnily enough, it resurfaced a memory he thought time had weathered and eventually obscured from his mind.

They had been on Appa’s saddle, before the war had been stopped and Ozai had still been the Fire Lord. He couldn’t recall exactly what they had set off to do, but Katara had been there, too, responsible for flying Appa. Toph had crawled her way over to him, shivering from the cold mountain and had practically squealed with surprise when she realized that firebenders ran warmer than the rest of them. 

She’d wasted no time in pressing herself up against him, cheekily draping herself over him until he’d stammered for her to stop smothering him. He thought he’d even heard Katara snicker from the front, which made him flush ten shades deeper.

They’d reached an agreement, _eventually,_ where Zuko had tolerated Toph sticking like paste to his shoulder, her hands wrapped keenly around his forearm as they passed the frigid clouds by. By the end of their flight, Zuko wasn’t tolerating it anymore; he embraced it, relaxing when he realized the smaller hands on him weren’t searing with blue flame. They were there because they trusted him. _Toph_ had trusted him.

He realized now, so many silly decades later, how much Toph’s simple gesture had meant to him then.

Zuko elected to keep steering Druk with his free hand, not daring to move the one she clutched.

There were so many of those little memories he’d thought, at the time, were trivial. He wished he had more to recall now, so he could cherish them as they so deeply deserved to be.

He glanced below them. The waters of Serpent’s Pass rippled contentedly far below Druk. He thought he could see the glistening backs of a pod of peacock-dolphins jumping jovially from the surface of the water. Druk warbled his interest, automatically crawling lower in the sky to fly nearer to the colourful creatures.

But Zuko was in no mood to appreciate the playful creatures. The pin in his pocket weighed heavy. Their confrontation at the inn had discouraged him from continuing their venture. He had been considering rolling down his sleeves and accepting that these questionable characters had been watching them ever since Gaoling, or perhaps even the Shoshun area. Yet, they had bested them twice; if such a wily group of rogues wanted to dance toe-to-toe with a Fire Lord and the inventor of metalbending, it would be their own bill to pay at the closest infirmary. Toph had challenged as much when he relayed all this to her when they’d left the inn.

He flipped the pin out onto his palm, curling Druk’s lead around two fingers as he held it thoughtfully into the sunlight. It depicted a sprig of dark, round berries, attacked by a red stem and nested in the curl of a golden leaf, its edges serrated and sharp. Toph had claimed it felt odd to her; that the metal was wrong, somehow. Tainted. He couldn’t imagine why that might be so, if it wasn’t platinum. He wasn’t certain why it even rubbed him the wrong way, it was only a silly little lapel tile.

A silly little lapel tile that bandits who attacked them in the middle of the night wore at their collars. Hmm. Perhaps it wasn’t so silly.

At his nearest convenience Zuko determined he would reach out to the nearest White Lotus outpost; he was aware that they had a hub south of Ba Sing Se, in the plains of the state of Jien Sin. He wanted them to be aware of this threat, and possibly to investigate the origin of the strange plant in the pin.

 _Uncle would know what it is_ , his mind gingerly proffered. His lips twitched up fondly. Uncle always had an affinity for plants; it came naturally to a man so in tune with his tea. Some of those skills, Zuko had picked up, but not nearly enough to make tea quite as special or tasteful.

His heart tightened painfully in his chest. Toph shifted, scowling like she could feel the sorrow dampening Zuko’s spirit. Even in her sleep, she was telling him to quit being edgy.

Zuko pocketed the pin, forcing the uneasy notion of their possible pursuers to the back of his mind. 

They were headed to the agrarian fields of Ba Sing Se now; to remember his Uncle in a spot he had held so dear in his mortal life. Not to dwell on elusive black-robed bandits.

* * *

Zuko had landed Druk rather clumsily on a building at the top of a street lined with quaint grocer outlets. He’d tried to pointedly ignore the stunned looks of the Ba Sing Seans staring at Druk with their jaws on the ground, led quickly away by Toph who was following her nose to the nearest stand filled with sizzling, pepper-scented meats and cheeses. Zuko was stunned when she stopped at a bar front where a woman with bronze eyes - Fire Nation, he realized warmly - paused behind the counter and regarded Zuko first with surprise, then reverence. 

Her name was Yuza and she’d keenly brought her two young daughters - Zo and Yangi - to the front to meet the former Fire Lord. Zuko had knelt before them while Toph had very busily picked out a number of items to be boxed by taste and smell alone. He was endeared by the gentle awe of the elder of the two, and wincing into gentle amusement when the younger tugged curiously at his beard. 

Toph hadn’t stopped making wry comments about where Zuko had been when she needed a babysitter for Lin and Suyin since.

When Toph decided they’d accumulated enough, they returned to Druk, who had been very, _very_ fascinated by whatever was inside the wicker basket Zuko had purchased last-minute when he realized traveling with his arms full of boxes wasn’t really ideal. So he’d let Druk carry it on one fang-- singular-- until they’d reached the foot of the hill he’d been yearning to see for some years now. Druk dropped delicately, warbling deeply as his riders disengaged onto the soft grass.

“I can’t believe you’re making Druk hold the picnic basket.”

“He wanted to.”

“He just wants all the spicy meat inside of it.”

Zuko shrugged. “Touché.”

Green leaves shivered at the crest of the hill, and Zuko’s heart swelled to see them, and he found his pace trying to accelerate the further uphill they climbed. Wind whispered coyly in his ears, and he thought he could hear Uncle’s cheeky laughter through it. 

Toph stopped suddenly beside him, eyebrows high. It gave Zuko pause, worry cinching him. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” she shook him off, looking more bemused now than anything. “Only that there’s spirits nearby.”

“Spirits?” he repeated, equally baffled, stepping further up the slope until the base of the tree was in sight. 

And true to Toph’s word, the tree’s clearing teemed with spirits, trilling and chirping and making play through the soft tussocks of grass. His heartbeat throbbed in his ears. What were they doing here? It was a rarity, he knew, for spirits to congregate in urban areas - with Republic City as the sole exception. But here, they tittered and pounced at the gnarled roots of the old tree - Uncle’s tree - gleeful and vivacious and lively.

A greater spirit, not unlike a dark-wooled ram, rested quietly behind the tree, sprigs of ethereal moss and bracken-fern sprouting from its back. At its feet, three tiny spirits scampered after one another, leaf-kissed antlers prouting from behind their ears. More spirits floated innocuously above them, flitting playfully between the boughs of the tree, no larger than baby sparrowkeets. 

Toph stepped up beside him, staring forward like she, too, could see the spirits before them. When the ramlike spirit turned its shaggy face their way, Zuko instinctively tucked into a reverential bow. “Spirits,” he greeted with surprising warmth, “may we join you?”

The spirit chuffed simply, lowering its head back onto the soft earth with a gentle purr of satisfaction. It was an invitation enough for Zuko, and Druk, too, as the dragon padded forward and waited patiently next to the tree. Some of the flying spirits darted excitedly out to bumble around Druk’s snout, and the dragon watched them with curious reserve. 

Toph didn’t say much as they laid out the cloth, settling down with her arms crossed contently behind her head as her back rested against the base of the tree trunk. There was a wry look on her face as Zuko laid out the boxes of spiced sausages, the thyme-covered pork kebabs that Toph had _immediately_ demanded they get, and their other food accessories. Pau buns and tea sandwiches, fire gummies and rice candy. He didn’t forget their special purchase for Druk, either, unearthing the rotisserie komodo chicken and smiling fondly when the dragon snatched it up with a grateful flare of his nose.

The antlered spirits moved curiously around the assortment, near enough to snatch something up if they were so compelled - but they remained respectful. One sat with a chirrup of greeting next to Zuko while the other two pelted to Toph, who only huffed and sat up. “Curious audience we’ve got here.”

“I don’t think your kebabs are in danger of being stolen,” Zuko rebutted helpfully. Unsurprisingly, Toph looked almost relieved by that. “They seem much more interested in the fire gummies.”

“Fine by me. So long as they’re not ogling _my_ rice candy,” Toph smirked, fingers beginning to twitch like she was about to earthbend a box of pork her way -- but seemed to have second thoughts, deciding instead to scooch over herself. Her two spirits followed, their tails curled happily over their backs.

“Those two like you.”

“Do they?” Toph grabbed herself a kebab, rolling it between her fingers. A spirit set its paw on her knee. “I hadn’t noticed.” She took a deliberate chomp of the pork, but it didn’t deter the inquisitive spirit from her thigh. Zuko heard her huff of dry amusement. “I think he’d be glad to see all these spirits up here. Iroh.” 

Zuko couldn’t agree more. Whenever Zuko had begged for relief from his duties as Fire Lord and stole away to the Jasmine Dragon to pretend, for a stressless week, he was only his Uncle’s tea-serving waiter - not the Fire Lord responsible for restoring a broken, scrabbling nation. And every time he came to Ba Sing Se, Uncle had taken him here, to this tree to share teacakes and, of course, tea. One could never forget the tea, he mused to himself, looking at the mug where his jasmine was currently steeping.

It was no tea of Uncle Iroh’s, but he could still taste the love he had always boasted about investing in every drop when he made his teas in Ba Sing Se. It was Zuko who knew each of Iroh’s recipes by heart, after all. 

“He would be,” Zuko laughed quietly. “He was closer with the spirits than anyone I’ve ever known. Perhaps even Aang.” Zuko smiled softly with remembrance. “I didn’t understand it for the longest time. I won’t lie and say that I even understand it now.”

He didn’t need to understand it. He’d come to terms with that many years ago, when he was still processing the solitary moons after Iroh had transcended into the Spirit World. Uncle had said it was not death, no; never death. It was simply the act of leaving the physical body behind while his spirit was free to roam eternally in the nirvana that was the realm of spirits.

“Spirits are tricky,” Toph rejoined. “Not as in cunning-- though, lots of them are. They’re pesky sometimes, always stealing my _mushrooms_. But the world’s only just been reintroduced to them for the first time since... “ She squinted. “I don’t know, actually. And you know I hate admitting I don’t know things.”

Zuko looked at his friend. His smile deepened with a mirthful twitch when one of the curious little antlered spirits nosed Toph’s elbow. Its friends came along next, chirping and arching their backs to press against Toph’s side. He could have laughed at the sheepish discomfiture in her face. Such restraint she had when these sweet spirits were on her like a robin-moth to flame; she wasn’t even lifting a finger to shoo them away like he’d expected.

“You think that with all these spirits roaming around now,” she began instead, looking oddly wistful, “maybe Uncle Iroh can come back, too.”

He stopped halfway through picking up a pau bun, his fingertips nearly puncturing the sides as he realized what Toph were implying. Uncle, returning to them? The notion made his heart rise into his throat and pound like thunder, but it soon eased, placated by something his Uncle had told him before he chose to leave the mortal world for that of the spirits.

“He chose to enter the Spirit World when he determined he had nothing else he wanted to accomplish here,” Zuko reasoned, then smiled so fiercely his eyes squinted. “He told me before he went he wanted to show every spirit just how good a cup of tea a human could serve. That’s quite a mission to uphold.”

Toph’s greyed eyes were thoughtful. “Then maybe we can go find _him_ . There’s the new portal in Republic City. Stars, what I’d _do_ for some magical Iroh-tea that would probably cure the root of all back pain.”

Zuko’s fingers laced thoughtfully in front of his mouth. Could he-- actually deign to do such a thing? To travel to the Spirit World to see his Uncle? He knew that Korra had been there, had seen his Uncle amid the spirits before the portals had even been reopened; but she was the Avatar, the bridge between their realms. He had never been able to sustain a connection to the spirits of the world like Iroh had; he did not mind, not really. But with this new thought in mind, it was difficult not to want to be ambitious to have that connection after all. 

He regarded Toph where she lounged. All three of her spirit accomplices had settled into comfortable crouches all around her, chittering softly to one another. She’d told him in passing when they were flying that the Foggy Swamp was a deeply spiritual place; perhaps it was that energy these spirits were drawn to, sensing themselves in Toph. Zuko just knew she would’ve clipped him in the shoulder if he told her as much. 

“Well,” Zuko began, voice bright with determination, “why don’t we?” 

Toph ceased her chewing, looking surprised. He felt almost smug for it. “ _Wait,_ seriously?”

“Unless you _don’t_ want this _life-changing field trip_ to be the ultimate redemption.”

“Don’t use my own words against me, Sparky.”

“We can use the portal in Republic City; the Air Nation protects it.”

“So they’re just going to let anybody waltz in on the spirits?”

“We’re not just anybody.” 

Toph smirked. “Can’t argue with that. When?”

Zuko reigned himself in, despite his eagerness. “..Not now. Not when there’s a possibility there’s someone stepping in our shadows.”

“Oh, quit your moping about our mysterious stalkers,” Toph grumbled halfway through a cheekful of rice candy. “They should have taken the hint the _first_ time that they can’t get the better of us.” 

Zuko tentatively had to agree. If a bandit group was so intent on targeting them, specifically - it was their rabbit hole to dig. Zuko and Toph did not step lightly; and would not fight lightly, either, if they dared to attack them again. 

Part of Zuko that wanted to simply believe they were thickheaded rogues angry that they’d been duped out of some stock. He wanted to be able to rest easily thinking it was that shallow, but he was never the optimist in the room. 

Whoever the bearers of the strange berry ceramics were, they were clever. They had not only followed their rather discreet path-- okay, excluding the disaster that had been the Earth Rumble-- across the length of the central Earth Kingdom, but had tried to take them out in their sleep. 

Whoever they were, they were organized. He would inquire to the White Lotus post in Jien Sin before they left Ba Sing Se to see if anybody there had any idea about these criminals. 

“Hey. Earth to Sparky. _Hey.”_

Zuko snapped out of his brooding, sheepishly wincing under Toph’s penetrating stare. “ _Geez,_ thought I lost you for a second. Your heart went all low and heavy like it does when you’re being angsty.” 

“Only thinking, is all,” Zuko murmured, rescinding the broody thoughts for another hour. Now was a time for remembrance; for celebration. Of Uncle, and for their reunion after so many lost years.

He leaned back slightly against Druk’s shoulder. The little flying spirits still danced around the dragon’s horns and ears, hiding in his golden mane - but Druk didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. In fact, his red flanks undulated like he was asleep.

Zuko laughed, turning to Toph with renewed enthusiasm. “Did I ever tell you about the time Druk kept trying to abduct one of the palace guards?”

“A dragon of many talents. Flying, fire-breathing, and kidnapping.”

“It really wasn’t his fault. The guard kept giving him scraps of jerky when no one was looking and he decided it would be best if he just tried keeping her in his den.”

Toph snorted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t give Druk jerky and you won’t be at risk of being dragon-napped. 
> 
> And also don’t stop bandits from robbing a farmer’s kid in the middle of nowhere because apparently these guys hold some fierce grudges. 
> 
> Things are really gonna begin to snowball for Zuko and Toph in the next three chapters! I’m not sorry in advance xoxo <33
> 
> Let me know what you think!! Reading your comments seriously makes my day


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